Flan

Firstly, the irises all along our driveway are finally blooming! I'm sad they weren't awake for our Mother's Day brunch (post on that to come), but it was such a lovely surprise to see when I walked out of the house this morning. The first truly beautiful thing to sprout up from the ground. I've got another post brewing about all the ugly shrubby crap we (okay, to be fair, that John) ripped out of the yard...

But here is quick post when I know I am backlogged on a lot of topics. Most pressingly, I realize I need to take photos of pretty much the entire house since I haven't shared more than isolated snippets over the last, holy cows, 7 months. The only room that still really feels unfinished to me is the guest room...I really want to slap up some paint, beef up the bedding, and hang some curtains. Maybe when we have more guests slated to stay over that'll be the kick in the pants I need.

Also on the to-do lists, in order of current importance:
1. Have AJ Perri come out and laugh at our AC unit and inspect it before it's AC season
2. Install light-blocking shades in the master bedroom (we get a 5:15 wake-up call thanks to the sun rising right into our room...ugh!)
3. Hang plate-rack shelving in the dining room to showcase and protect my china tea plates
4. Maybe do some more styling in the laundry room area--paint? hang some art? make that damned wall-mount AC unit box cover look intentional?

But for now, I'll leave you with a little adventure I took recently. I realize the culture shock of moving from French macarons to Spanish flan (for a Mexican holiday...I know, I know...just roll with it!), but it's all Mediterranean (except for the Mexico part). Hm...maybe that worked out better in my head. Oh, well.

John loves flan. Loves flan. If we're in a restaurant and it's on the menu, then he's assuredly saving room for dessert. As far as custards go, I tend to prefer creme brulee, but flan is growing on me. As I planned out our Cinco de Mayo dinner menu, I did some searching on the ever-reliable AllRecipes, and blammo: found an easy, un-intimidating recipe for flan that yielded lots of great reviews from other home bakers who tried it. I was on board.

First up is caramelizing sugar by melting it.

All caramely and good!

After making as many batches of macarons as I've made recently, this flan felt like a gimme: really all I needed to do was caramelize some sugar and toss the custard ingredients into a blender. What the what?! Honestly, the biggest challenge was figuring out a baking vessel...I don't have a casserole dish large enough to nestle a second casserole dish in to accomodate the water bath, so instead, I used two 9X13 cake pans and made individual flans in ramekins (which worked out for the better anyway, cuz it was super-easy, super-fun, super-storable single-serve desserts that we enjoyed all week!).

Cozy in a water bath, ready to bake up and custard-ize!

I'd totally make this again, and will work to find a solution so I can make one large serving of it if I want. But for now, I'm liking the result of the adorable indie sizes.

In fact, looking at this makes me sad it's gone. Sigh...