instant mix

When my mom visited me back in college, for some reason we went to the thrift store. We found these cute copper molds of a horse, a bunny and a duck and she got them for me. Over the years, I haven't had many uses for them. One holiday season, I made some horse and rabbit shaped soap, but lately, they've been hanging on the wall. None of my roommates have ever asked about the weird animal molds on the wall, but then again, neither of them have asked about the beach chair or the "Grass Under Renovation" sign either.

For some reason, I recently became obsessed with the idea of making individual-sized flan in the animal molds. Saying "duck flan" and "rabbit flan" cracked me up endlessly. One day at the dollar store, I happened to notice these instant flan packages (2 for a dollar) and the flan project was underway. However, I forgot to read the package and didn't get any milk and the flan project was temporarily on hold again. Oops.

After obtaining the milk, for some reason, I decided that I needed to get fancy. In the garden, my lemon verbena shrub was getting out of control and was taller than me, branching out and blooming in all directions. I decided that it would be an interesting idea to infuse the milk for the flan with some lemon verbena. I blame this on my mom, who likes to add lemon and orange to many different kinds of foods.

Everything was fine and dandy until I clogged the garbage disposal with lemon verbena leaves. Those are some fibrous suckers. Just as with potato peels, do not think that they are small and therefore won't do any damage! I did not exactly enjoy sticking my arm down the garbage disposal to pull out random lemon verbena veins, leaf stems, or particles stuck in the blades.

The instant mix itself was pretty straightforward: heat milk, mix in powder, pour into molds. I ended up filling all three animals, a couple ramekins, and an extra large ice cube tray with four slots. Suddenly flan was taking over the refrigerator.

When fresh, the flan unmold well enough. I had a hard time with the bunny, since its ear is shallower and narrower than the other body parts, but it eventually slid out. Even though there was no indication that the flan would have a caramel glaze on top, for some reason, I still expected it. Instead, the flan looked like a bunny made of imitation processed cheese. I guess a bunny made of processed cheese is still cute, so that was ok. Other attempts to umold the flan, about a week later, did not go so well, as it had hardened around the edges of the pan. Sorry, horse and duck flan.

The flan mix had a silky texture, which was nice, but I found the flavor to be a little too heavy on the lemon verbena. I sprinkled it with a little bit of lemon zest to offset the flavor, but I think in the future if I were to make instant flan, I would skip the whole infusing process.

Throughout this experiment, I found that I really liked to say the word "flan." I blame this on my dad, who for one summer, said "Jamba Juice" about five times whenever we passed one of those stores. Once I made the animals, I wanted to say "flanimals," but then I looked that up on the internet and found out that flanimals already refers to a set of characters that have nothing to do with flan or flannel, but I guess are animals. What's up with that?

The verdict: Don't go out of control with the lemon verbena and maybe instant flan will be your friend.