Flan Parisien is a classic of French bakery stores. The smooth texture and vanilla taste of the custard make you feel good and bring you back to childhood. Cut in rectangles or triangle pie slices, it is easy to eat as you open the paper in the street, when leaving the store. Surprisingly, it is fairly easy to make. 

This year, because of the pandemic, the French Consulate in New York organized an online celebration of July 14th - Bastille Day. The Chef of the French Consulate did a Zoom class about Flan Parisien. It turned into a surreal show, as the attendees and the chef were all French, but the Consulate had made it a point for the class to be held in English. So there were a lot of "Alors, heu...", "S'il vous plait, I have a question", or "Donc, now...". I have to say some French kids were doing the flan live, following the Chef, and they were quite impressive. So it is safe to assume that if French kids can do it, American adults should be able to follow. 

I used the Consulate Chef's recipe, which was perfect, and just replaced the dough by my go-to Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry in order to make it even easier and faster.

Ingredients

Frozen puff pastry dough (my favorite is by far Pepperidge Farm)

3/4 Cup Heavy Cream

2/4 Cup Sugar

1 Vanilla Bean

1 Whole Egg

5 Eggs Yolks

1/3 Cup Corn Starch

2 Tsp Unsalted Butter

Pre-heat oven to 340F.

Remove the puff pastry from the freezer and leave it out to unfreeze for about 30 minutes.

·      Warm up milk and cream in a saucepan, plus ½ sugar.

·      Add vanilla extract.

·      Bring to a boil, turning with a whisk. Keep it warm.

·      In a mixing bowl, put all the eggs, add the remaining ½ sugar and mix with a whisk until it whitens.

·      Mix corn starch into egg mixture.

·      Add ½ hot milk into the bowl.

·      Pour back the mixture into the pan with the rest of the milk and mix well.

·      Heat on low heat and keep whisking. Cook for 5 minutes (boiling) until it thickens.

·      Add butter and mix.

·      Pour the custard into a bowl to cool down a little.

Assemble

·       Butter and then flour a one-inch high non stick mold, round or square.

·      Sprinkle flour on the countertop. Flatten the dough with a rolling pin into a circle or a square (rotate ¼ quarter each time), working quickly so it doesn’t get warm.

·      Put into the mold and remove excess dough.

·      Stick back into the freezer for 5 minutes so it gets hard.

·      Pour the custard into the mold. Flatten with a spatula.

·      Bake into the oven for 40 minutes. It should burn a little on top. If it is not colored enough, put it under the broiler for a couple of minutes.