My favorite quote about Mexican cooking is, “The least important thing about Mexican cuisine is the recipes.” Having spent time in Mexico over the years, from Puerto Vallarta to the Yucatán to Oaxaca to Mexico City, I have found that folks just cook; it’s part of their DNA. That being said, there is a large body of shared culinary experience to make this possible and one of those traditions is the use of canned milk in baking.

On my last trip to Mexico City, I was fortunate enough to be shepherded about by Francisco de Santiago, a former bullfighter. (I refused to believe this story until he showed me an old photo. He was a bullfighter!) One afternoon, de Santiago, who goes by Paco, took me back to his apartment to meet his wife, Lulu (Lourdes “Lulu” Rosas Rodríguez), who made a classic Mexican flan while Paco called up a bartender friend of his, plied me with over a half dozen cocktails, and then, when I was in an alcoholic stupor, sat me on a saddle, wearing a cowboy hat and whip and took a photo which is, to say the least, unfortunate. But back to the flan.

One thing that I dearly love about the Mexican kitchen is the blender, an all-purpose appliance used for cakes, custards, and soups. This flan recipe is no exception. The mixture—cream cheese, condensed milk, evaporated milk, cream, eggs plus egg yolk, vanilla and salt—is poured into the blender, mixed and then poured into a cake pan that has been coated with caramel. Lulu has a special setup for steaming the flan which may have originated in kitchens that rarely had ovens; we use an oven but were able to skip the water bath by using a wet kitchen towel underneath the cake pan.

Lulu uses three types of canned milk—evaporated, sweetened condensed, and a form of canned cream. We call for the first two items—after all, they define the flavor profile of this dish—but instead of canned cream we call for half-­and-­half. The joker in the pack is the cream cheese, not an ingredient in a French custard, but a common part of a Mexican flan. This makes the recipe a bit sturdier and also easier to get right—a crème caramel has to be removed from the oven at just the right moment.

As for the caramel, I find most serious bakers start with just sugar, no water, but a bit of water does make this process more fail-safe so we call for two tablespoons water to ¾ cup sugar. Once the caramel is ready, we let it cool for a couple of minutes and then pour it into the cake pan, swirling to coat.

We bake it in a moderate 325°F oven covered in foil. The flan is ready when it still jiggles in the middle and reaches 180°F internal. It needs to chill overnight to make sure that the caramel properly liquefies when served. Serving is a bit of a magic trick but easy enough; just cover the cake pan with a large plate and invert. A bit of caramel may stick to the inside of the cake pan; use a silicone spatula to get at the last bits, drizzling the syrup over the top of the flan.

One of the beauties of this recipe as opposed, say, to crème caramel is that there is no water bath and the timing is less precise. And having a few cocktails in the process turned out to be a pretty good idea as well!

Chris Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."