Passover Postscript (2008 Edition)

Last week's Passover conundrum, about what to make for a Passover dessert among so many interesting recipes, was narrowed to two final selections. I wanted to make something out of the ordinary, and the results were successful.

Above is a Spanish orange-almond flan, adapted by Joan Nathan from a recipe by Ana Bensadón. Somehow, I averted what I thought would be a complete disaster during the cooking process and somehow produced a pretty incredible dessert, worthy of making not just for the Passover holiday, but any time...you have a dozen eggs to spare! The disaster part came while cooking the flan in the oven, which was a surprise, since I successfully navigated the toughest step in the recipe: making caramel for my very first time (seen bubbling away below).

While the recipe indicated the flan should cook for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, after an hour's cooking, it was completely liquid in the center, despite a thin veneer that had solidified on top. I ended up continuing to bake the flan, racing back and forth between the computer (to seek answers online for what I was screwing up) and the oven, checking on the flan every 10 minutes. After 30 more minutes, the flan still wasn't cooked in the middle, but I then discovered that the oven wasn't calibrated correctly and was off by 40 degrees. After another half hour of cooking and harried Google searches for "jiggly flan," the center had finally firmed up somewhat, and though it was still a little wobbly, I finally removed it from the oven after nearly 2 hours, let it cool in an ice bath to speed things and transferred the flan to the refrigerator.

After the flan chilled for several hours, it released (surprisingly) easily from the pan. What came out was a quite stunning orange-infused custard topped with caramel. The ground almonds, which mostly floated to the top while cooking, ended up giving the flan a nutty bottom layer. Interestingly,  a hard layer of caramel remained in the bottom of the pan, and I don't know why (maybe not enough time in hot water before releasing?).

I also made François Payard’s flourless chocolate-walnut cookies  which were simpler and less stressful than the flan. The recipe contains no flour (obviously) or even matzo meal, though the cookies puffed up in the oven into something chewy, and chocolatey -- almost a cross between a brownie and a cookie, with a crackled surface on the outside. They look completely different than the ones at Smitten Kitchen. It must be due to my using store-bought confectioner's sugar -- a shonda because it contains cornstarch -- rather than homemade powdered sugar.

It was a little weird to work solely with powdered sugar and cocoa to make the cookie batter. Just four egg whites brought all of the dry ingredients together, which became super-thick, sticky, fudgy, and barely could be stirred. The recipe made 12 humongous cookies that no single person could consume, particularly after a huge Passover meal. If I was to ever make them again, I would probably divide the batter into 24 smaller cookies.

Recipes:
»Orange-Almond Flan [New York Times]
»François Payard’s Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies [New York]