Raisin Bread Flan Recipe
Is It A Pudding Or Is It A Flan?
The Inspiration for this dish came from an old croissant Bread Pudding recipe that used croissants and a Flan mixture in a double broiler to make a delicious Bread Pudding dessert! Bread Pudding is a great way to work away stale bread to make an easy inexpensive dessert, the problem with the Croissant Bread Pudding recipe was that croissants are fairly expensive and because of their high calorie count, not a bread that most people have in stock. When you do buy croissants they come in bulk! So not only do you have a high calorie dessert, then you have a large quantity of croissant left to consume! When I made the Croissant Pudding I added raisins and cinnamon, and I always had problems getting the raisins to stay in the right places ( and not float away)! Then one day I was looking at some raisin bread in the grocery store, the calorie count was only 170 calories for two slices, it had cinnamon swirls and the cost was a mere $2.18 a loaf! Ureka! I had an ideal bread substitute for croissants that was not only a lot cheaper, but saved me from having to buy raisins or cinnamon and it saved me a boat load of calories at the same time!
A true Hybrid! Flan has always been a favorite dessert of mine. It's easy to make, inexpensive and has that wonderful caramel topping. So I decided to revamp to Croissant Bread Pudding dessert by using raisin bread and Flan mixture ( the only exception is substitute 1 Tbs. sugar for brown sugar) and do the caramel topping just like a Flan. So this is a true Flan only raisin bread added to it. It has the best that puddings and Flan has to offer, it has the wonderful texture and raisins and cinnamon form the raisin bread and it has the great taste and caramel topping of a Flan! It is both! A true hybrid in every sense of the word! If you like flan or pudding this desert is bound to please your palate! It is not nearly as sweet as you would think, and taste great with whip cream topping! If you prefer the taste of Flan to pudding then you can scald the milk and use 2 Tbs. of sugar (instead of 1 sugar & 1 brown sugar). When buying the raisin bread try to pick a brand that has cinnamon swirls and lots of raisins!
Ingredients
4 table spoons sugar
1 table spoon sugar & 1 table spoon brown sugar
2 cups milk
4 eggs beaten
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 loaf of raisin bread
Directions
Take a metal cake pan put in the 4 table spoons of sugar ( add more if needed) over the stove and caramelize the sugar. Use oven mitts or pot holders melted sugar is extremely hot! Use low heat move pan constantly stirring with a wooden spoon. After you have a golden layer of melted sugar on the bottom, set pan aside. Mix all the remaining ingredients in a large bowl except for the bread. Take this liquid mixture and pour about a third of it over the caramelized sugar. Next tear the raisin bread into about 1 inch pieces and place on top of the liquid when the liquid is covered with bread add more liquid. continue layering this way until the pan is full usually about 10 slices of bread, just make sure all bread used is well saturated. when full place pan in 13 x 9 x 2 in. casserole dish, pour boiling water into the casserole dish about half way up the flan pan and then place in preheated oven and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until a knife comes out quickly. When done, refrigerate until cool, pull out and run a knife along side the pan, then place a plate on top and flip the pan over the plate. Gently raise the pan, cut and serve with cream topping!
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