Cream cheese flan recipes seem to all call for a blender: you just put all the ingredients (possibly minus the evaporated milk) into the blender, kind of willy-nilly, and whizz it up.
Problem is, I don't own a blender. Obviously, wildly throwing together all the ingredients ain't gonna work in a mixer. But what will? For reference, the ingredients I'm working with are 1 package cream cheese, 5 eggs, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1 can evaporated milk, and vanilla.
- I know (from experience) that the cream cheese must be fully softened — otherwise you end up with a curdled mess.
- Should I beat the eggs separately?
- What order should I mix things in? If this were cheesecake, I'd cream the cheese and sugar, but here the sugar is already dissolved in the condensed milk.
Best Answer
I would likely work the cream cheese first, then try adding the liquids from most to least viscous (condensed milk, evaporated milk, eggs, vanilla)
If you try to use a mixer with cream cheese and lots of liguid, it's harder to combine -- you end up getting floating bits of cheese in the liquid (likely what you mentioned as a 'curdled mess'), rather than it fully encorporating. Having the cream cheese at room temp helps, but is still problematic.
It's possible that you might also want to strain the mixture when you're done, as the mixer might leave the eggs' chalaza intact. (if it's too thick to easily strain when done, you can either whip the eggs first and strain them before adding them, or just skip this step)