Sweet Potato Cheese Flan
Remember the movie Envy? Well even if you don’t remember, I remember that during the course of the movie Flan Dessert was served or mentioned at least few times, I’ve always wondered what it was like but I’d never looked it up. Now you get the idea how much I knew about flan prior my little experiment. It was a dessert that appeared in the movie.
I’ve never had Flan, what is Flan exactly? I Googled it and Creme Caramel came up. I’m learning every day as it seems, I had not idea and because of my little discovery I was even more determined to try this out. Who doesn’t like the sound of Creme Caramel ?
Reading bunch of recipes I came to realize that it is pretty easy to make; basically it is just a baked custard, that’s all that is to it, nothing too complicated, taking basic ingredients turning them into this luscious dessert.
I decided to work with what I had in the fridge, which was yogurt, farmer’s cheese and sweet potato puree. Why not? Are you curious about the result ? Way past the midnight I unmolded first flan, and for the obvious reasons(it was kind of late to have a dessert!) I was determined to try only a tiny little piece…but ended up eating the whole flan. It was simply amazing, first bite is sweetly seductive , with just a hint of sweet potato flavor, touch of cinnamon and all the creaminess that just melts in your mouth, combined with caramelized honey. Sigh. Chocolate ganache is really not necessary for this dessert, but I decided to try it anyway.
Sweet Potato Cheese Flan
3/4 cup farmer’s cheese or ricotta cheese, tutorial on how to make farmer’s cheese from scratch
1container of Chobani Greek yogurt-6oz -I used fat free)
1/2 cup sweet potato puree
3eggs
1/4-to 1/3 cup honey, or brown sugar
1tsp cinnamon
1tbl butter
3tbl honey
Preheat oven to 325F
In a small dish using a fork, blend together 1tbl butter and 3tbl honey. Use this mixture to coat 4 ramekins
Have a deep baking dish handy, for added stability place the dish onto a baking sheet, place the ramekins inside of the dish.Set aside.
In the meantime heat about 2 quarts of water and bring it to boil.
In a blender combine all the ingredients cheese, yogurt, sweet potato puree, eggs, honey/brown sugar and cinnamon and blend until smooth.
Evenly distribute mixture into prepared ramekins.
Place the baking sheet on the oven rack, then pour boiling over around the ramekins to a depth about of 1 inch. Bake for 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted near center comes out clean.
Once baked remove ramekins from the water bath and let them cool completely, cover and chill before serving and unmolding the flans.
To unmold fans you will have loosen the edges, run a knife around to let the air and and gently tap the ramekins if necessary.
Invert a dessert plate over each ramekin. Holding the plate and ramekin turn the ramekin and plate together, unmolding the dessert.
Enjoy alone or with ganache.
