Coconut Fruit Flan
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Preparation time: 30 minutes (plus 2 hours resting time and 2 hours cooling time)
Cooking time: 50 minutes total (25 minutes pastry, 25 minutes creme patissiere)
For pastry:
- 260g/9.1ozs. plain flour
- 30g/1oz. sugar
- 1 egg
- 95g/3.5ozs. butter, cold and cubed
- 1/4 -1/3 cup ice water
For coconut creme patissiere:
- 6 egg yolks
- 1/2 cup caster or superfine sugar
- 250ml/8.8ozs coconut cream
- 250ml/8.8fl ozs. milk
- 4 tablespoons cornflour or fine cornstarch
- 50g/1.7ozs. butter
- A few drops vanilla extract
To decorate:
- White peach, passionfruit, raspberries, blueberries, pomegranate, kiwifruit, lychees, mint leaves and toasted coconut flakes
Step 1 - Place the flour, sugar, egg and butter in a food processor and process until you get fine sandy crumbs. Add the ice water first 1/4 cup and then a little more if needed. Roll into a ball and cover with cling film and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Step 2 - Meanwhile make the coconut creme patissiere as it will need to cool. In a large jug, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until pale and fluffy. Then place the coconut cream, milk and cornflour in a heavy bottomed saucepan and heat on a low to medium heat until thicker with bubbles.
Step 3 - Add one ladleful of the hot liquid into the egg yolks and whisk to combine. Then add another and whisk and then pour the whole jug of egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan and return to the heat to thicken further. Once it has had a couple of minutes to thicken stir in the butter and vanilla. If there are too many lumps you can sieve it. Place in a bowl and cover with cling film and allow to cool and thicken further.
Step 4 - Roll out the pastry on a floured surface and line a 22cm/8.8inch flan tin with it. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes (this is to reduce shrinkage). Line with foil and fill with baking beads or dried beans and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the foil and beans and bake for another 10 minutes and then cool.
Step 5 - Spoon in the completely cool coconut pastry cream and then decorate with fresh fruit. I like to cover all the little gaps too and use pomegranate seeds for this.