# The Parisian Flan - Chocolate Edition # Introduction When you like to eat cake everyday, you cannot spend hours for a thing that would last for one day or two. That's fine to spend time for big occasion: Christmas, birthday, or any other party, but for a regular day, I have other things to do. This recipe requires very basic ingredients: milk, eggs, butter, flour, sugar. No need for the fancy ingredients you can only find on organic supermarket or hypermarket. I tried a lot of bakeries that are selling this cream pie. The regular version (without chocolate) often costs around 2€50. While it is super easy to make and not made of expensive ingredients, very few bakeries make the effort to make it correctly. - Worst case: The cream is an industrial preparation, with a lot of starch and no eggs. The color is very yellow, because colorants are often added to reproduce the egg color. It is very thick, too sweet, and tasteless. When taking a piece with a spoon, you obtain a kind of jelly that keeps it shape. - Good case: The cream is homemade. The color of the cream is almost white (while burned on the top of the flan), with (if your lucky), trace of vanilla grains. When taking a piece with a spoon, it must not spill over, but may behave like a yogourt. The secret is the **plain cream** that you add on the egg preparation. This makes the flan melt in the mouth. Here, I propose the chocolate + black-wheat version of the Parisian Flan. Feel free to try new version (coconut, cinnamon, lemon, hazelnuts, ...). # Materials ## Ingredients For the crust: - 1 egg - 80 g of butter - 80 g of plain flour - 80 g of black-wheat flour (replace by plain flour if you don't like) - a little bit of salt For the cream: - 2 eggs - 40 g of cornstarch - 700 g of milk (semi-skimmed or not) - 70 g of sugar (less is not recommended, you can add more if you like sweetness) - 100 g of dark chocolate (60 - 70%) - 100 g of whole cream (30% fat) - A little bit of vanilla (liquid fragrance or vanilla pod) ## Tips To use a vanilla pod, do not mix the vanilla pod ! Infuse and extract the seeds. To get something less creamy, add less milk (600 g) or cook longer the egg cream before adding the plain cream. ## Material - Pan or heating blender - Mold of 24 cm diameter (smaller is okay) - Bowl - Paper cooking sheet (opt) - Rolling pin (opt) # Procedure ## Diagram A diagram to see how steps depend on each others. ![Cooking diagram](/assets/images/flan_choco/recipe_flan_small.svg) ## Prepare the Crust Put all the ingredients together. - If you have a blender, that's perfect, use the knead mode until you obtain a single piece of dough. - If you don't, clean your hands, and take the time to manually mix the ingredients. Then, spread out the dough on a (paper) cooking sheet to obtain a round larger than the mold. Put the sheet on the mold and rectify the borders of the crust to get it all on the same level. ![000_big](/assets/images/flan_choco/000_big.jpg) ## Prepare the Cream Keep the chocolate and the cream for later. Put all the other ingredients: - If you have a heating blender, check the recommandation - If you have a Thermomix, 7 min, Speed 4, 95°C - If you have none of them, on a pan, and stir until the liquid thickens. ![](/assets/images/flan_choco/007_small.jpg) ![](/assets/images/flan_choco/001_small.jpg) Stop heating, and now add the chocolate and the cream. Mix until you obtain a homogeneous cream. ![](/assets/images/flan_choco/002_small.jpg) ## Combine the Two Put the cream above the crust. ![](/assets/images/flan_choco/005_big.jpg) Put in the over (180°C) for +/- 30 minutes. ![](/assets/images/flan_choco/006_big.jpg) Let it cool down to room temperature before cutting it, otherwise the cream would flow out of the flan. ![](/assets/images/flan_choco/008_big.jpg) But if you cannot wait, that's fine ! ![](/assets/images/flan_choco/000_b_big.jpg) After one night in the fridge, it is even better. ![](/assets/images/flan_choco/009_b_big.jpg) Enjoy !