Right before Thanksgiving, I showed Chris the guest post on Pioneer Woman’s blog for Pumpkin Leche Flan and he immediately (and very excitedly) said, “Let’s make it!” I had no idea that he loved flan so much! It’s not exactly a dessert I look forward to eating, though I don’t necessarily mind it too much.

We didn’t have time to try it for T-day, but accomplished it the following Sunday. Hah, we even braved the outlets on that busy shopping weekend to buy a set of ramekins just for the flan!

Honestly, I was a little skeptical about attempting flan because it seemed way too complicated and involved techniques that we don’t normally do in the kitchen. But this is all about trying new things together! In the end, we found that this recipe is pretty darn easy.

Warning: This is going to be a long post with photos!

First up, making the caramel. Um, we had to make-do with a nonstick calyphon frying pan because we didn’t have a sauce pan. But hey, it worked!

The corn syrup and sugar bubbling up..

We were afraid of burning the caramel (and the pan) so we did it slowly over medium heat (instead of medium-high). It took awhile before the mixture started to brown and actually look & smell like caramel.

Voila! This is the first time that I’ve ever had homemade caramel. So much better right out of the pan than the gooey crap in stores.

We quickly poured the hot caramel into six 6oz ramekins. (I couldn’t find 8oz ones)

While the caramel cooled and hardened in the ramekins, we got working on the pumpkin mix. Instead of a strainer, we decided to use a cheese cloth instead.

Look at all that gunk left behind on the cheese cloth! We strained it 4x before the mixture looked very smooth.

Time to pour the mixture into the ramekins! I lined a casserole pan with a dishtowel as suggested. This is to ensure the ramekins do not get too hot from directly touching the pan.

Wrapped each ramekin individually tightly with aluminum foil before pouring in a hot water bath (not pictured). Then into the oven for 35 minutes!

And here is a ramekin, right out of the oven! It was jiggly but firm enough for us to know that it was done cooking and time to sit in the fridge.

******DRUMROLL******

After sitting in the fridge for 2-3 hours, we ran back to the fridge and inverted one of the ramekins out onto a plate. Beautiful! And it tasted delicious too! Before making this flan, I was not a big fan of said dessert…always tasted way too rich and sweet, but this was just perfect. The sweet smokiness of the caramel added such a nice flavor to the pumpkin flan.

Look how awesome the top looks! The hardened caramel had melted and infused into the pumpkin flan while in the oven. Y’know, I never really knew how flans had that caramely top until now. Was always a mystery!

Taking the first bite…

Mmm it was rich (but not overly) and so creamiliscious. The pumpkin flavoring was very subtle. Next time, we will try a regular vanilla flan though.. just to see the difference.

Two big thumbs up! This was not only fun to make, but the end result was pretty and delicious. Mucho kudos to IvoryHut (the guest contributor on PW) for thoroughly explaining each step of the way. This helped to ease my intimidation of making what appeared to be such a delicate dessert.