Leche Flan: Steamed or Baked?*

In the pursuit of making at-least-decent macarons, I am left with an insane amount of egg yolks.

Perfect. Time for a kitchen experiment.

The thing with separating eggs is that it's a bit daunting at first but as you do it more often and become comfortable with it, it's a fairly easy task. Just remember:

a) eggs are best separated when they're cold and,

b) in most cases, it's okay to get a bit of egg whites in the yolk but it's not okay to have even the tiniest bit of yolk in the egg whites.

Egg yolks will make your leche flan dense and rich, while egg whites will make your leche flan light.

One of the ingredients that I am both in awe and fear of is sugar.The science behind sugar and cooking it is extremely fascinating to me. But cooking sugar is tricky. It's quite easy to burn, and well, quite easy to get burned by it. And it HURTS. It makes you want to punch something. Seriously.

Oh, stirring is an enemy when cooking sugar. Do not stir! Swirl the pan, but do not stir. Stirring will agitate your sugar solution and the whole thing will crystallize and you'll end up with a big hot mess.

Now remember that unless you add something to it (eg. butter for butterscotch, cream for caramel sauce), sugar will continue cooking even after you take it out of the heat source. So switch off the stove a couple of moments before you achieve the caramelization you're going for. Otherwise, you can easily overdo or burn your sugar.

The lighter it is, the more sweet it will be and the darker it is, the less sweet/more bitter.

I've always steamed leche flan out of habit, but in this experiment, I steamed two of them and baked the other two.

Steaming leche flan is the more straight forward way. Cover the flan with foil, and steam it for 30-35 mins.


Baking leche flan is the more tedious way. Pre-heat your oven, then bake using a bain-marie (a fancy term for a water bath) for 45-50 mins. By doing so (bain-marie), you make sure that heat is evenly distributed to whatever it is you're baking. Also, since water can't go any temperature higher than 100C/212F because it boils, you are assured that what you're baking bakes at a stable, low heat. This is important for baked puddings, cheesecakes, and custards - ie, leche flan.

As with most things in life, the longer/harder way normally produces the better results. Well at least in this case, more aesthetically pleasing results.

The steamed leche flan had air bubbles on the sides. When you cut it, it's fine and smooth but the air bubbles on the sides ain't pretty. Taste-wise, it's less sweet than its baked counter part and offers a bit more texture - it's not 100% smoothness.

The baked flan. Ain't she a beauty? It's SOOOOO smooth! It's denser and more...creamy. I really really hate my lack of good photography skills right now. It's 13285793 times more beautiful in real life! Taste-wise, it's sweeter and it kind of...melts in your mouth.

In the end, it depends on the person eating it I suppose. But for me, hands down, the baked leche flan wins - dense, smooth, pretty, almost sinful.

So, in the middle of August, I have four llaneras of leche flan at home. Is it just me or does anyone else smell Christmas coming?:)