Horchata Caramel Flan

A dessert for the weekend!

Hello, Happy Friday!

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I don't know about you but this has been a busy week, I finished the final edit of Small Batch Cookies, getting it ready to send to the printers in the next week or so, an incredibly exciting but also nerve wracking moment. I try incredibly hard to ensure there are no mistakes in my books and if it wasn’t for the need to actually print and publish the thing I would probably never stop checking the manuscript for typos. Thankfully the book is in really good shape, thanks to my editor and copyeditor (and my anxiety about errors) and I’m excited for the first copy to land on my doorstep, but that probably wont happen until June or July. In the meantime I will continue to tease you with peeks at the project, trying to do anything I can to up those pre-orders! If you follow any authors you have almost definitely heard the same pitch, about why pre-orders are so important, but to summarise; pre-orders let retailers know there is interest in a book and they stock more copies and give better placements in store and online. So if you're thinking of getting a copy anyway, pre-ordering really helps. But enough about the book lets talk about Flan!

Because I was busy staring at a computer screen all week, I was craving something simple and for some reason I couldn’t get the idea of flan out of my head. When thinking about what the flavour could be, my partner Mike suggested Horchata and what a perfect combination of ideas that is. A baked caramel custard popular in Latin America paired with a rice milk drink also popular in Latin America. Flan is one version in a variety of baked custards and one version in a variety of baked custards with a caramel topping. Very closely linked to the French creme caramel the main difference seems to be what the custard is made from. Creme caramel is made from milk, sugar and eggs, in flan the custard is made with condensed milk, evaporated milk (although not always) and eggs. In some parts of Latin America, such as Mexico cream cheese is sometimes added. There is also a Philippino version of flan, called Leche Flan which is baked stovetop, and a Japanese version called Purrin, the world clearly loves custard! I wanted something closer to Mexican flan so I went with a mixture of condensed milk, evaporated milk, egg yolks and whole eggs and then comes the horchata element.

Horchata is again something that varies a lot depending on where it’s made. The drink can be traced back to North Africa where the drink was, and still is, made by soaking tiger nuts in water. The Moors brought the drink to Spain where it remains popular and where the tiger nuts remain the popular base for the drink. The popularity spread from Spain to Latin America but here it became a drink made with either rice, almonds or a mix of the two. Again depending on what country in Latin America you visit the drink will be made in a variety of ways, the rice milk variety is just the version that broke through and whose popularity spread worldwide. In Honduras, for example, the drink is made with a mix of rice and a licorice tasting seed. When I was researching horchata I even came across the Puerto Rican version made with sesame and rum which I will absolutely be giving a try this summer as a refreshing cocktail. The simplest version of the drink is made with water and simply flavoured and sweetened. Some are made extra creamy with the addition of milk or condensed milk but traditionally all of the creaminess comes from the rice or almonds.

To turn this drink into a flan I had two ideas, both worked but each idea has a very different level of work so have provided both so you can chose your own adventure and make whichever version you have the patience to make. You can opt for the simplest method using shop bought rice and almond milk or you can make something a bit more involved but with a boost of flavour that comes from making your own toasted rice milk infusion.

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