The fact that La Tortilleria, an authentic taqueria in Melbourne's Kensington, makes amazing tortillas is no secret. But Grandma Pina’s Flan, a delicious meeting of Spanish and French cuisine, definitely is.
Grandma Pina began working in her family’s restaurant at the age of four. Her parents sat her on a stack of wooden boxes and instructed her to man the till. She learned her craft at the hands of her own grandmother, a master in the kitchen, and passed it down the generations.
Her grandson, Gerardo Lopez, brought the recipe with him to Australia, where it’s put to good use as the final act of the Mexican festín.
Grandma Pina's Flan
Serves six
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: two hours
Ingredients
375ml of condensed milk
375ml of evaporated milk
250g of thickened cream
4 eggs
¾ cup raw sugar (may vary depending on the size of cake tin)
Method
Set the oven to 170°C. Blend the condensed milk, evaporated milk, thickened cream and eggs together until the mixture is smooth with no lumps.
Pour the sugar into the bottom of a cake tin, enough to spread evenly across the bottom at about half a centimetre thick. Put the cake tin over medium heat until the sugar melts into a dark-brown syrup. Gently pour the creamy mix on top of the melted sugar.
Cover the top of the cake tin with aluminium foil and put the tin into a larger oven-proof container filled with water. Place in the oven, so it cooks bain-marie style.
Bake for two hours. You can tell it's ready when you shake the tin and the flan wobbles in one movement like jelly, without ripples.
