Full Revised Spanish Flan Recipe

[linked from allrecipes.com] The pink font is for the explanations, and I owe credit to ASOTO (the original chef), aka Adriana, and the advice given by the reviewers from dates 12.31.07-04.07.08. I've just created this for those who want a faster reference without having to read the reviews. Flan is painstakingly easy to mess up for what seems to be any easy recipe, but the turnout is delicious.

Makes:
One 9.5 inch round flan, about 1 inch thick

Prep Time:
1-2 hrs
Cook Time:
65 min
Ready In:
8 hrs
Servings:
8

Ingredients
1 cup white sugar [for glaze]
4 large eggs
1/2 can sweetened condensed milk (use 7 ounces of the 14 ounces in the can)
1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (163 degrees C).
2. Put a cookie sheet, cake round, or pan, that's bigger than your 9.5 inch glass round baking/pie dish, onto the middle rack and fill it with water so that it reaches the ⅓ or ½-way mark on your glass round. This will serve as the waterbath for your flan.
3. Put your glass round into the waterbath to warm up as the oven is preheating. This will keep the glaze from hardening too fast when put in contact with the round.
4. In a large bowl, mix the eggs by hand. Mix in the evaporated milk and vanilla until blended. Mix in the condensed milk by spoonfuls; it helps to make sure it gets mixed in nicely. It should look a tiny bit thick, a lot runny, opaque, & light yellow. Set aside.
5. In a medium saucepan over the lowest heat control, let the sugar sit for a moment, letting the granules warm up a bit. Sugar doesn't like being heated up right away; when it is, it burns.
6. After 3 - 4 minutes, turn the heat up a tiny bit and wait again for about 2 - 3 more minutes until you see the edges of your sugar turn slightly yellow and translucent: the sign of melting.
7. Let that sit for 1 minute, then stir the sugar from the outside to the middle VERY slowly. This lets the air bubbles underneath the pile of sugar to come out, and not burn the thin film of already melted sugar on the bottom of the saucepan. Don't stir too much or too fast though! Your sugar will be lumpy and not fully melted if done right.
8. Alternate from a low heat setting to a medium-low setting every minute or so to keep the sugar from overheating, but to keep the sugar from not melting at all. Once you get a mixture that's slightly syrup-y but still slightly sugar-y, stop! That's enough, because if you melt it all to syrup, it'll burn while you're baking. The syrup part should be golden in color.
9. Now take out the round from the oven, being careful not to touch the hot water, and set it down. Pour the hot sugar mixture into the round and quickly spread it out in the bottom of the dish; it will seem to harden quite quickly despite the heated dish.
10. Pour the egg mixture through a strainer on top of the caramel, and cover loosely with aluminum foil, poking holes into the sheet. It may be easier to poke the holes into the foil before placing foil on the round. The strainer is used to make the consistency of the flan smoother, and without “eggy lumps”, and the holes in the aluminum foil help bake the flan.
11. Bake for about 60 min (adding more water into the pan halfway through baking; the water usually evaporates and needs to be replenished for the flan to be baked correctly), then take a peek into your oven, lifting the foil to look at your flan. If it's a light golden brown at the edges, then you’re ready to take it out. If it’s only a light orange/gold color, let it bake for about 5 more min.
12. Let it cool for around 2 hrs with the foil on, and then an additional 2-3 hrs without the foil at room temp. This helps the caramel bond a bit with the egg mixture and prevents the caramel from sticking to the bottom of the round when inverting.
13. After cooling at room temp, refrigerate with plastic/Saran wrap until cold to the touch. Touch the middle of the actual flan, being careful not to poke a hole. Don’t judge the coldness by only touching the glass round—it will oftentimes be colder than the actual flan.
14. When you want to serve, which can be the next day, place the glass round into a small waterbath again by placing the round in a larger pan filled with hot water. Before inverting to try and flip the flan, sort of tilt the round a bit to let the syrup flow out into a small bowl or plate. This prevents the syrup from going everywhere when inverting, if you have a plate that doesn’t fit exactly with the top of your round.
15. Then, place the plate you want the flan to be on, upside down on top of the round. Hold the round with both hands, and invert. If the flan does not come out right away, you can try to shake it a little, or replace it back into the waterbath for a few minutes to repeat.
16. Once inverted, pour the syrup from the bowl back onto the center of the flan. You’ll have some of the caramelized sugar stuck on the bottom of the round.
17. Cut and serve.
    
    Note: If want the flan to be sweeter, you can make more of the syrup glaze to taste. The only difference there would be melting the sugar thoroughly.

Also, please comment here or on my collaborated recipe about additional changes you find that help with the overall process! Any advice or questions, feel free to tell or ask!

Language Barrier-- No More

When you watch this, you may be wondering, "Oh my gosh, it's in a different language, I can't understand anything!" Well, unless you're Korean or you know the Korean language, you're right, you can't understand what they're saying. But... that's when you only focus on the words. Instead, focus on the picture, what you see. When people listen to music, look at art or a picture, no words are needed. It's so true that those two things could be other universal languages. Some would argue that math is a universal language as well, but I'm referring to ones that can bring out the emotion, and really express what you want to say. This music video definitely brought out emotion in me, and it was a very well shown example of how we don't need to understand each other sometimes to know what's really going on.

"Youth Is Wasted On The Young."

Not sure who said that phrase, but I think I agree. You don't know what you have until it's gone, and before you know it, your youth will disappear.

When I was younger, I wanted to grow up. I'm guessing most people were like that. And, I'm guessing that by the time I turn 90, I'll have wished that I knew the importance and magic of my youth when I was young. I'm guessing most old people think that.

In a way, life goes in an arc. When you start young, you're not sure of anything, you're small, insignificant to some because you don't hold much power in the society [unless you're a celebrity baby, then huzzah!], and you're frail. But as you get older, you climb the arc of life and you reach the highest point in your life, when you're at the top of your capabilities, and you can do anything. Or, that's what it seems like anyway when you're the person thinking. Then, as the arc slowly reaches the ground again, you realize that you're just as frail as you started out. The wrinkles on your skin show like battle marks, scars to prize because you made it. You made it through the curious times of being a toddler, rebelling times of the teenage, growing times of the middle age, and just now making your way through the last stages of wonder. Which, in fact if you look at it from a different perspective, is only the beginning. The arc, or cycle of life if you're talking about Lion King [Disney movie], is only an incomplete, crude graph for something which we can only try to depict in pictures. Youth is something that we can only try to keep.

"Youth is wasted on the young."
Well... I guess that... if when you're old, and you appreciate what you had back then-- the beautiful skin, the sharp mind-- it's okay. It wasn't wasted.

Imagine.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aIT87On4ktU

This Youtube clip really makes you wonder if this boy remembers his past. He speaks as if he really knows. And you imagine... How can a boy as young as he, think of something so deep? I believe he remembers.

Miles.

I would walk a mile for _________ .

[Topic!: What would you walk a mile for?]

Forgive.

[Topic!: Forgiving and apologizing are two key ingredients in being happy.]

In this song, One Republic sings about how it's "too late to apologize." I don't think that's right. I don't think it's ever too late to apologize, and even more so, I think when someone apologizes, you should accept it. It's just... it makes life so much easier to move on don't you think? It's not only common courtesy, but when you hear about people forgiving the ones that killed their family members, or someone they loved, how can you not forgive the small things in your own life?

As the saying goes, "Forgive and forget."

[P.S.: I love this song though-- the beats and the melody are wonderful, and I'm sure a lot of people could relate to what One Republic is singing/feeling.]

Url source for Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePyRrb2-fzs

Territories.

I think all of us are territorial at a certain degree. For some it's a place such as their room, where they start to freak out if people go through their stuff. For others it's a gang, where the actual lines and borders of their home consist of wars over rights.

About less than a month ago, my neighbor decided to bring her dog over to see if her dog got along with ours. They were going to go out on vacation, and they wanted us to look after it.
I think I really felt like a mother then. I was wondering how my dog, my baby, would act around this new dog. I wonder if it's how mothers feel when their child meets new kids. I was so angry when our neighbor just put down her dog in our backyard and let it run all over my dog's territory. For some reason, I felt like if my dog couldn't really do anything about it, I should help him out. It's his backyard, and this other dog was starting to pee everywhere! In a way, I think I was freaking out more than my dog was. But I could tell he didn't like the new dog. My dog would raise his fur and try and keep the back porch to himself. So that day, I stood there, almost trying to make sure that my dog would reign superior on whatever he wanted. I guess that was unfair, but at the moment, I felt my dog being endangered, and being a territorial person that I am, I wanted to keep him safe and comfortable, no matter how extreme I must have seemed that day.

Topic!: Territorial? I wouldn't blame someone for being that. They're probably protecting something they care about.