A FODMAP IT!™ recipe from Naomi Josepher, Jon Payson & Georgia Freedman’s cookbook
There’s Always Room for Chocolate
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Let’s Make Chocolate Flan!
If you are a chocolate fan and are in Brooklyn, NY a visit to The Chocolate Room is a must. It’s like walking into a chocolate fantasy land for adults.
Not that kids won’t find treats as well but this is less Willy Wonka and more of what you crave when you envision really well crafted desserts made from top notch chocolate, such as this Chocolate Almond Flan.
This book, There’s Always Room for Chocolate, has been a long time in coming. The café itself opened in late 2005 in Park Slope – there is now also a second location in Cobble Hill – and word spread fast.
Perhaps you have heard about The Chocolate Room from The Food Network or read about them in O Magazine or The New York Times? Well, now you can make their desserts at home, even while on the low-FODMAP diet.
Simple to FODMAP IT!™
This recipe for Chocolate Almond Flan is easily FODMAPed. Simply replace the whole milk with lactose-free whole milk and pay attention to the serving sizes.
One thing to note: Monash has given whipped cream a Green Light in quantities of ½ cup (125 ml). Cream doubles in volume when whipped, which means ¼ cup (60 ml) of heavy cream “should” be okay.
This is why it is important to always stick with small portions, especially with such rich food, and see how you do. Make sure to check out their recipe for Chocolate Caramel Popcorn as well.
From the Book:
Cool, creamy, eggy flan is one of the most classic desserts in Latin America, and in the last half- century it has become popular in the parts of the United States with a large Hispanic population— not to mention ubiquitous in Mexican restaurants across the country.
When our executive pastry chef, Carmine Arroyo, was a kid, his family would make flan in big cake pans and leave it in the refrigerator to be served throughout the week, cut into thick slices.
The version Carmine makes here at The Chocolate Room uses cocoa mixed in with the rest of the ingredients to give the whole pudding a rich chocolate flavor.
He also adds almond extract— one of his favorite flavors to pair with chocolate— which turns what is usually a homey dessert into something surprisingly sophisticated.
Published and adapted with permission. There’s Always Room for Chocolate by Naomi Josepher, Jon Payson + Georgia Freedman Published by Rizzoli, 2017©. Ben Fink © photographer.
Chocolate Almond Flan
This Chocolate Almond Flan hails from Brooklyn's famous The Chocolate Room.
Low FODMAP Serving Size Info: Makes 1, 9-inch (23 cm) flan; 12 servings
Ingredients:
- 2 1/2 cups (495 g) granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons water
- 4 teaspoons light corn syrup
- 8 extra-large eggs
- 4 cups (960 ml) whole milk
- 1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream
- 1/4 cup (21 g) plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons pure almond extract
Preparation:
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Preheat the oven to 325°F/165°C. In a medium saucepan, combine 3⁄4 cup (149 g) of the sugar, the water, and corn syrup. Use a wet paper towel to wipe down the sides of the pot and have a cup of water with a pastry brush nearby. Bring the mixture to a vigorous boil over high heat. If sugar crystals form on the sides of the pan, brush them down with the wet pastry brush. When the sugar syrup begins to take on a golden hue along the edges, reduce the heat to low so it doesn’t cook too quickly. Continue to cook, shaking the pan frequently to distribute the cooked sugar, until the caramel has a dark golden, almost orange color, then immediately remove the pan from the heat and pour the caramel into the bottom of a 9-inch (23 cm) cake pan. Let the caramel sit until it cools down and becomes fairly firm.
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In a large bowl, whisk the eggs to break them up. Add the remaining 1 3⁄4 cups (347 g) sugar and whisk until well combined; set aside.
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In a medium saucepan, combine the milk and cream and cook over medium-high heat until they start to steam. Remove from the heat, add the cocoa powder, and whisk well, scraping down the sides of the saucepan to break up any small pockets of cocoa, until all the cocoa has dissolved into the milk.
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While whisking, pour the hot milk mixture into the eggs in a slow, steady stream to temper the eggs. Add the almond extract and whisk well to combine.
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Pour the custard base over the caramel in the cake pan, and put the filled cake pan into a baking pan at least 1⁄2 inch (12 mm) taller than the cake pan. Fill the outer pan with about 3⁄4 inch (2 cm) of water, then cover the whole thing with aluminum foil. (Make sure the foil is pulled tight and won’t sag over the flan.)
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Bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes, until the flan is just set but still looks wet and jiggles when the pan is moved. (You can touch the top of the flan very gently with your finger to make sure that it is set; some of the custard may come off on your finger, but it will be thick, not liquid.) Keep the flan in the water bath and set aside to cool; the residual heat of the water will continue to cook the flan, and it will set as it cools. Once the flan cools to room temperature, refrigerate it for at least 3 hours to firm up.
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To unmold the flan, run a paring knife between the sides of the flan and the pan, then place a large serving plate upside down on top of the cake pan and flip the flan onto the plate. (The plate should have a raised edge and be big enough to hold any caramel that slides off the top of the flan and falls down the sides.) Heat the bottom of the pan very quickly with a kitchen torch or soak a kitchen towel in very hot water, wring it out, and place on the bottom of the pan to loosen the caramel. Gently remove the pan. If any of the caramel has solidified into glasslike pieces, remove them from the flan and discard. Slice and serve.
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Make Ahead: The baked flan can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
Notes:
TIPS
- The ingredients for the flan have to be whisked together by hand because using a mixer would introduce too much air and create bubbles in the flan. To stabilize the bowl so that it won’t move around on the counter as you whisk, twist a kitchen towel into a long rope, form it into a ring on the kitchen counter, and nestle your mixing bowl into the ring.
Nutrition
All nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary with brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes and more. For a more detailed explanation, please read our article Understanding The Nutrition Panel Within Our Recipes.
Can i just leave out the cocoa powder for regular flan?
No, I would not recommend that. Everything in a recipe, especially desserts and baking recipes, is a balance. In this case the cocoa affects flavor and texture, level of sweetness, etc. It is actually a fair amount of cocoa, ratio wise, and leaving it out would definitely affect the results.