Marti’s Flan Pâtissier
This tart for me is the definition of simple, classy and timeless. It has just the right amount of sweetness and in the oven gets these beautiful burnished spots, making everyone of them truly unique.
The curst is a pretty standard short crust (quickly becoming my go-to crust for MANY instances, to be honest), that I season with a tiny bit of vanilla, salt and sugar. It holds it’s shape and is crumbly an almost flaky.
The filling is what you would call a classic pastry cream, turned pudding. After a lot of research, and a lot of tries, I locked a recipe that respects the original but features some key additions. It calls for mostly egg yolks and one whole egg. Call it superstition but I truly believe that one egg white provides structure to the final tart. (Maybe believing is the actual trick?).
A lot of recipes spice their filling with Rum or Whiskey, but I actually found myself more excited with the idea of that than the actual result, so I keep it pretty simple. Where I deviate from tradition is in seasoning. My filling has salt. Quite a bit of it. Plus more for sprinkling on top. I believe the salt plays an integral part here in taking your tart from nice to great. It’s not traditionally French but guess what, neither am I. We’ll call it creative liberties.
I made this tart for my friend’s birthday (hence the name). She provided some much needed feedback and support when I was on the precipice of giving up.
Serve this tart with a drizzle of honey. And while a glass of wine would be perfectly nice with it, I’d say this is definitely a cocktail Sobremesa. Maybe some warm Old Fashioneds or if you want to go classier a single malt on a large ice cube.
ingredients
For the Short Crust:
250g AP flour
180g (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
50 ml water
1/2 tbsp of salt
1 table spoon granulated sugar
For the Pastry Cream filling:
840ml whole milk
180g granulated sugar
50g corn starch
1/2 tbsp kosher salt (+ more for sprinkling on top)
5 egg yolks
1 whole egg
1/2 stick of butter (cubed)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
instructions
For the Pastry Cream, mix the milk and half of the granulated sugar in a large pot. Place on the stove top on medium heat. You want to heat it right before boiling point, but don’t let it boil. Once you see the milk is steaming, remove from heat.
In the meantime, place your egg yolks and whole eggs in a large bowl and the rest of your sugar. Whisk energetically until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture looks a lot more pail and smooth. (This method is called blanching the eggs).
Add your corn starch to the egg mixture and incorporate well.
Once your milk is warm, fill a whole cup or measuring cup and start to (very slowly) pour the milk into the egg mixture, while whisking. What you want here, is to bring the temperature of your egg mixture up, very gradually. (If you did it all at once, the eggs would cook, and curdle). Keep pouring the hot milk into the eggs while whisking. After you’ve poured the entire cup and the eggs are now warm, you can then go back to the stove, and place the entire egg and milk mixture again into the pot. Turn the heat on again to medium high temperature and keep whisking.
Do not walk away here or stop whisking. While the heat is on, both the eggs and the corn starch will begin to activate and thickening the mix (thus turning into pudding!). Make sure your whisk is going deep enough, mixing and picking up the entire mixture, specially the bottom and corner sides of the pot. After a minute or so you’ll start seeing and feeling how the mixture gets thicker, and the whisk starts leaving a visible trail after itself.
After a few minutes of continuous mixing, you’ll want to see if the mixture is boiling. If it is, you’ll see some lazy bubbles come up to the surface. You’ll need to make sure the mixture boils, if not the starch won’t fully activate and the cream won’t have the texture that it needs for the final Flan. Once you see a couple bubbles, turn down the heat and keep whisking for another 2 minutes. Then remove from the heat.
Add your cubbed half a stick of butter and whisk until it melts and incorporates into your pudding.
Pour your pudding onto a baking sheet or a shallow pan to let it cool. Place some plastic wrap on top of the pudding making contact with it so that it doesn’t form a skin. (Try and not leave any air bubbles between the pudding and the plastic wrap). Set aside to fully cool. You can place this pudding in the fridge and continue with the rest of the instructions one or two days later.
Preheat your oven at 350ºF
In a bowl, combine your flour and salt. Add your cubed butter and with your fingers, pinch the butter so it gets incorporated into the flour, in bites no larger than a pea.
In another small bowl, place your egg yolk, water and sugar and combine well.
Incorporate your wet ingredients in three go’s, shaking the bowl and roughly mixing with a spatula after every small pour. The dough will look dry and unmanageable first. After pre-mixing with a spatula, use your hands to fold it and press it onto itself inside of the bowl. You’ll see how it begins to come together.
Once you have one large mass, place it in a floured countertop so you can knead it.
Get the dough in the shape of a ball, and using the palm of your hand, press the dough and slide away your hand so that you form a trail of stretched dough. You’ll do this twice, in two different directions and then you’ll re-form your dough ball. This method is called fraisage. You’ll do this two to 3 times. You’ll see that each time you gather the dough to make a ball, the dough becomes smoother and shinier. Stop after 3 to 4 times, to avoid the butter in the dough melting too much or becoming too warm.
Cover your dough ball in plastic wrap and pat so that it’s packed into a flat rectangle. Place in the fridge for 30 mins to let cool.
On a floured countertop, roll out your dough into a disk, 30cm in diameter (if you’re using a 23cm springform pan). If you’re using a different vessel, just make sure your disk has a bit of overhang , so that the tart has crusted sides.
Butter your pan and place your disk onto it, pressing on the sides, so that the disk is fully making contact with the pan.
Line the pan with tin foil and then fill it with beans, rice or baking weights and pre'-bake in the oven for 20 mins. (This is so, while the crust is baking it has something pressing on it and it doesn’t bubble up while baking and losing it’s shape).
Afterwards, remove the tin foil with the weights, and discard. Place the pan in the oven once more for another 15 mins. It should’ve developed a nice golden color and should feel set. Let cool.
Take your budding out of the fridge and remove the plastic wrap. It should’ve solidified enough so that you can slice it with a knife. It should be set but jiggly.
Using a large whisk, mix the pudding energetically so that you bring it back to a smooth cream consistency. This might take some elbow strength and it will look wrong in the beginning. Keep whisking and see how it transforms!
Pour your pudding onto your cooled crust and top with some flaky salt.
Place back in the oven for 50 to 70 mins. You can turn the pan half way through to ensure even heat throughout. You’ll see that in the last 50 - 20 minutes the top of the custard will begin to burnish and develop those really nice dark spots.
Remove from heat and let cool before serving. Store in the fridge for 2- 4 days.
