Fudge and Flan

The theme of Teen Cooking Club for May 2014 was Fudge and Flan.  I always attempt to introduce a new food to my group, and flan was foreign to most kids this time around. 

Unfortunately, this flan experiment had to be from a box.  I have been blessed to enjoy fresh flan from my Latin American friends through the years, and there is no replacement for food from home, from the heart.  The caramel made from scratch cannot be beat.  Sadly, with only 2 hours to work, setup of kitchen, introduction, instructions and clean up included, there was not enough time to complete a flan from scratch and have it ready before we closed the kitchen.  

Flan from a box :-/    {Pay no mind to the mess around the left hand burner.  

This instructor never makes mistakes!}

When my students assembled these personal portions of flan, the "caramel" went in the cup first, followed by the cooked custard mixture.  If a teen or tween crinkles their nose at "caramel" in a pouch and questions, "What is that brown stuff?," a mental alarm goes off that the "food product" is less than tasty.  

If time was available, we would have made this amazing recipe from Pati's Mexican Table, which airs on PBS.  I am a cooking show addict and have totally fallen for Pati and her friendly approach to Mexican cooking.  I have learned a lot from her episodes.

Along with flan, we made smoked-sea-salt-caramels, which took forever, but my prized students persevered that recipe.  Chubby-hubby-buckeye-truffles were another team's concoctions.  And this fudge recipe was made in a double batch, which curiously disappeared before my taste test, hmm. 

You know a good recipe when there are no leftovers!

Overall, the kids had a great time and I heard my name with questions at least 642,987 times as the kitchen was abustle.  They cooked, cleaned, learned and goofed off as much as they could.  I claim another success in the kitchen of Local Union No. 1000.

FYI, the kitchen we use is in our local union hall, located within the Corning Civic Center Plaza.  Through request of their board members, I am granted use of the facility at a discounted rate to provide these cooking classes for free to our local teens.  If not for the generous support of our USW Local 1000, there would be no Teen Cooking Club provided by the Southeast Steuben County Library.  Be sure to thank our local union for such a gift to our community.