The impossible cake: less complicated that I thought

Not everything is as complicated as it seems, sometimes you found a recipe that makes you think twice about doing it, just because it looks scary and you brain tells you failure failure!!!!!!. Well, some recipes deserve to take the risk. One of the recipes that always made my brain scream it’s the so called “chocoflan”, “magic cake”,”impossible cake” or here in my country the very famous Tortaquesillo.

It looks complicated but actually is very simple to do. I'll give you my version of the recipe and you will need the next ingredients

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE CAKE BATTER (this is a regular vanilla cake recipe)
• 10 tbsps. butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 c. plain flour (you can use cake flour)
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. fine salt
• 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup of buttermilk (I used regular milk with a splash of vinager)

FOR THE FLAN MIX

1 can of evaporated milk
1 can of condensed milk
4 eggs
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
1 tbsp of rum

FOR THE BAKING PAN

Option 1: In a 10-inch round cake pan. Melt directly on the burner a cup of sugar with 2 tablespoons of water until it turns lightly brown and while it is hot try to cover the whole pan with this caramel and reserve.

Option 2: (the easiest way) Grease a Bundt pan with butter or baking spray. Pour 1/4 cup of caramel sauce or dulce de leche at the bottom of the pan

INSTRUCTIONS

• Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, vanilla, beat for 12 minutes until light, and fluffy.
• Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a separate mixing bowl.

• Beat a half of the flour mixture and half of the buttermilk into the mixture. Repeat, ending with the last of the flour mixture. Blend well.

• Pour cake batter into Bundt on top of the caramel sauce

• For the flan: In a blender, add all ingredients and blend well. Pour flan batter carefully over cake batter

• Sit the Bundt pan on a roasting tin or larger baking pan and add about an inch of hot water. Bake for about 70 – 90 minutes at 302 °F or until a toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean

** (Both times that I made this cake it took two hours to be ready)**

• Remove from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Gently run a rubber spatula around the edge and the center of the pan. Put an inverted rimmed plate on top of the pan, jiggle and flip over

The magic or impossible thing about this cake is that the two batters separate in the oven due to their differing weights. The heavier, custard-y flan batter sinks to the bottom of the pan, while the fluffy, air-filled cake batter rises to the top. The water bath keeps the direct oven heat from curdling the flan, and adequate time in the refrigerator ensures it sets up before slicing.

Recommendations

• Please please use a Bundt pan. I use a regular round cake pan and after 2 hours in the oven, the center of my cake was still soft.

• Try using coconut in both mixture, toasted coconut for the cake mix and coconut rum and milk for your flan mixture. The taste will be fantastic

• If you are preparing your cake pan with option 1, please be careful, hot caramel burns are the worst

Note: I only took those two picture because I didn’t want to record my failure, but it turned out it was a succes