A little Halloween treat! I’ve been going pumpkin crazy this year – pumpkin this – pumpkin that – and here’s yet another pumpkin recipe to add to the mix. Pumpkin flan is a great gluten-free alternative to pumpkin pie. It has the same basic ingredients – eggs, milk, pumpkin, sugar, spices – but with that deliciously, unique flan taste. After all, how can you go wrong with caramel?! For those new to flan, it’s a popular Latin American custard dessert. I baked these in little silicon pumpkin and owl shaped molds (the pumpkins turned out better then the owls in this go around). Baking flan in the mini silicon molds was a bit of a challenge especially when it came to the water bath; there was floating, there was flooding, and there was plenty of cursing. But if you feel up for the challenge, they did turn out cute, if your not up for the challenge, baking the flan in ramekins works just as well and taste just as good!

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup light Corn Syrup
• 2/3 cup Sugar
• 12 oz Evaporated Milk
• 14 oz Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 15 oz pureed Pumpkin
• 2 Eggs
• 1 tbsp Pumpkin Spice
  • or my favorite pumpkin spice blend
    • 2 tsp Cinnamon
    • 1/4 tsp Ginger
    • 1/4 tsp Cardamon
    • 1/4 tsp Coriander
• 1/4 tsp Salt

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (~177 C).
2. Arrange your ramekins or silicon molds into a cake pan or some other high sided bake ware.
3. In sauce pan (make sure your not using a pan with aluminum in it) melt together the sugar and corn syrup.
4. Allow the sugars to caramelize into a golden caramel.
5. While the sugars are cooking, beat together the remaining ingredients.
6. Drizzle the caramel evenly into the bottoms of your baking molds.
7. Allow the caramel to cool just slightly, but not fully solidify (a soft set), before carefully pouring the custard into the molds. The caramel should stay at the bottom of the molds.
8. Slide the pans into the oven, and carefully pour water into the bottom of the bottom of your cake pans to create a water bath. Ideally you want to fill the water to about 2/3s of the way up the molds.
9. Bake the flans for 40 – 60 minutes depending on the size of your molds. My mini silicon molds held about 1/3 cup of custard and were done in about 40 minutes, but if you are baking it all in a single dish, it will need about a hour. Several 4″ ramekins usually take ~50 minutes.
10. Refrigerate the flan for several hours or overnight before serving.
11. Use a butter knife to carefully loosen the edges of the flan before flipping it upside-down onto the serving plate. The flan should easily slide out followed by a golden trail of caramel syrup.