Air fryers are great kitchen tools that allow users to cook or bake many different foods, including flan, quickly. This versatile tool is essential for adventurous but busy home chefs.
You can make flan in an air fryer because the appliance operates as a miniature convection oven and is ideal for baking small portions of food, including desserts.
Read on to learn more about successfully cooking flan in an air fryer!
How to Bake Flan in an Air Fryer with Silicone Cups
We’ve tested how to make flan in an air fryer. Follow this overview of the baking steps that we did:
- Mix all the ingredients together. The recipe for flan we used was 1 cup of whole milk, 3 tbsp white sugar, 1 egg, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 1 tbsp cajeta on the side (Mexican caramel with goat’s milk).
- Assemble the silicone baking cups. Drop some cajeta in the silicone baking cup. Don’t worry about covering the bottom, it will spread. Pour the flan mixture over the cajeta.
- Make the water bath. Flan needs a water bath. We used water in a ramekin. Place the silicone cups in the ramekin. Ensure the water doesn’t get too high, or it will boil over.
- Preheat the air fryer. Set the air fryer to 170C/350F. Once it’s preheated, place the ramekins in the air fryer and cook for 25-30 minutes.
- Carefully remove the ramekin when it’s done cooking. Flan won’t be solid and will be a little jiggly. Let it cool completely before removing it from the water bath and placing it in the fridge.
- Let the flan cool entirely before flipping. If you don’t, it will fall flat.
Once you’ve followed these steps and the flan is baked, carefully remove it from the air fryer basket so it can cool and you can enjoy!
Using the Air Fryer as a Convection Oven to Make Flan
An air fryer is a mini convection oven with cooking properties that make it a good tool for baking.
A convection oven uses rapidly circulating hot air to cook food placed inside. As a result, food will cook faster and more evenly than it would in a conventional oven.
Because of their small sizes, air fryers can bake more quickly and with less radiant heat than a traditional large oven, making them ideal for hot days, small spaces, and small dishes!
Since it can be cooked in various baking dish sizes, using an air fryer for baking flan is ideal. The dessert will also cook perfectly from the evenly circulating hot air.
You can ensure a successfully cooked flan with just a few easy adjustments to your air fryer and baking methodology!
Air Fryer Baking Adjustments
Because convection ovens disperse heat differently than conventional ovens, you may need to adjust your recipe to ensure a perfect flan.
You may also need to make adjustments based on your baking dish and the size of your air fryer to ensure air circulation and avoid damage to the appliance.
Once you have chosen a recipe, consider the following adjustments to ensure that your flan comes out perfectly:
- Choose a baking container. If you have a smaller air fryer, consider using individual serving containers for your flan to ensure the air can effectively circulate.
- If you use a smaller baking vessel than what the recipe calls for, you may need to reduce the cooking time from the recipe so that the flan doesn’t burn.
- Adjust the recipe’s stated cooking time to account for the air fryer’s efficiency by reducing the cooking time by 25%
- Reduce baking temperature by 25% but cook for the stated amount of time, in addition to adjusting cooking time to accommodate the baking dish size
Keeping these tips in mind, along with the steps below, will help to ensure that your flan is baked to perfection!
What You can Use to Bake Flan
Depending on your recipe and your individual preferences, consider using one of the following to hold and mold your flan as it bakes in your air fryer:
- Silicone baking cups. Though these may not hold their shape perfectly in the rapidly moving air, they will stand up to the heat and provide perfect portions.
- Air fryer cupcake mold. This is sturdier than individual silicone baking cups and is easier to remove. It also allows hot air to circulate.
- Non-stick tart pan. Mini non-stick tart pans are heat resistant and allow the flan to be easily removed from the pan.
No matter what you use to hold your flan, ensure you are not crowding the fryer. Always place dishes in the appliance’s basket to avoid damaging essential heating elements.
You should also always check the heat resistance of your baking vessel against your recipe and any necessary temperature conversions to ensure you don’t damage the air fryer or dish.
You should only bake flan in a single layer in the air fryer to avoid overcrowding and ensure enough room for the hot air to circulate so that the dessert cooks evenly.
Conclusion
Because flan can be baked in a variety of small dishes and containers and will benefit from hot circulating air, with a few adjustments, an air fryer is an ideal way to bake a perfect flan easily!
