Home Made Flans

To start the year we’ve decided to give you something sweet: the recipe for our home-made flans, or crème caramels. Many people say they are the best they have ever tasted, but two Trip Adviser reviewers claim they come straight from the supermarket. We want to remove all doubt on that score, so here is the secret which we have kept for over twelve years. We make it in batches of 28 individual portions and we use:

2 litres milk
1.3 kgs. sugar
13 eggs
1 lemon skin
1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon
1 teaspoon sweet vanilla powder

Set the oven on high. Make the caramel by boiling 350 gr. sugar with a cup of water. Heat the milk with all the other ingredients except the eggs and let simmer slowly for a minute or two. Beat the eggs in a large bowl and slowly mix in the milk, beating all the time. Put a little caramel in each flan mould and then fill the mould with the egg and milk mixture. Put all the moulds in a large pan and half fill the pan with water. Put the pan in the oven and cook in “baño maria” for about an hour. Let cool a little then take the moulds out of the pan of water and store them in the refrigerator.

Trip Adviser is a very handy tool for travelers and it probably helps to raise standards and keep “mein hosts” on their toes. But it does show that you can’t please all the people all the time. We are very proud of many glowing comments made by our guests and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for taking the trouble. The most favourable reports certainly come from guests we’ve most enjoyed catering for; they’re the ones who realize we’re human too and, who knows, we might have a trade publication called Guest Adviser.