Goat Cheese Flan and a Trip to Vermont

I hope you had a great 4th of July. I had a good one, in fact, I had an exciting one. I went to Vermont for the first time and loved it. I've always wanted to visit Vermont and finally last week, was the week. I packed up my bags and headed up North with some friends. We stayed in a cute house with the most beautiful view in a quiet little town, surrounded by nature at its best. Cool, misty mornings with the sound of running water from a nearby creek was worth the drive there. 

We had a whole list of places we wanted to visit and we covered almost all of them. Our first stop was Vermont Creamery. We visited their goat farm as well as their creamery, amazing goat cheese If you go there, make sure to get their Bonne Bouche and thank me later. We visited several types of farms; fruits, vegetables, cows, other cheese farms. I will give you a list of all the places. We also stopped at King Arthurs flours. We just had to, needless to say, their bread was amazing and their cafe and shop are adorable.

We didn't go to a single restaurant. Instead, we locally sourced all the ingredients and cooked. We carried around a cooler filled with goodies, cheese, vegetables, fruits, yogurt, bread etc. A true farm to table experience. We also did a lot of picnicking, and let me tell you, finding the perfect spot for a picnic in Vermont is not a hard task. 

I came back home with goat cheese and I was inspired to create a dessert with it. I realized I didn't have a flan recipe on the blog so I went for goat cheese flan. I can not begin to tell you how good this came out. It's as if a cheesecake and a flan had a baby (yeah, it's as good as that sounds). The spoon goes right in without a fight. It's rich, creamy and the goat cheese sneaks in at the end. You want to try something different? This is the dessert to make.

Ingredients:

makes 6-8 servings 

depending on the size

For the caramel:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/8 cup water

For the custard:

6oz goat cheese (chèvre), room temperature

4oz creme cheese, room temperature

3 large eggs, room temperature

1-14oz can condensed milk

2 ½ cups milk, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 ˚F. Start by making the caramel, in a saucepan, combine the water and sugar over medium-high heat. Cook until the sugar begins to melt. Stir with a wooden spoon until it turns light amber color. Equally divide the caramel into 6 ramekins (be extremely careful, caramel burns are the worst)  set aside.  Now lets work on the custard. Place the eggs, goat and creme cheese in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Mix until smooth and the mixture is pale yellow, about a minute. Add the milk, condensed milk and vanilla and mix until well incorporated. Pour the custard into the prepared ramekins and bake in a water bath for 30 to 45 minutes or until the custard is set but slightly jiggles when gently shaken. Let it cool completely, cover and refrigerate over night. To serve, run a knife around the sides of the ramekins to loosen the flan, invert on a serving plate and serve with fresh strawberries. 

For water bath: Pour  hot water into a rosting pan, so that it comes halfway the sides of the molds. 

Here is the list of places we visited and more photos!

Romulus Craft

Quechee, Vermont

Crossroad Farm

Wayward Goose Farm (we had and amazing raw milk yogurt here)