Stovetop flan is what people make when they’ve realized that pastry doesn’t need to be complicated to be good. Forget water baths, special molds, and candy thermometers. Five ingredients, ten minutes on the heat, and you get something that beats most desserts prepared the day before.
Imagine the surface of a perfectly unmolded flan. Smooth as satin. The ivory cream color, slightly translucent, topped with a light amber caramel — not the bitter dark brown, but the luminous amber of a caramel that has just set. When you dive a spoon into it, it yields with slight resistance, then immediately melts on the tongue without any heaviness. The smell of vanilla is there, discrete, just enough to remind you that this isn’t industrial.
Continue on the next page:
