Café de Olla Chocoflan

Hola, I’m baaack–and I’m pretty sure you’re going to love this recipe, it’s a café de olla chocoflan! It is a cinnamon coffee flan, with a really fudgey cake bottom! If you’re curious, this is the pan I used for the chocoflan.

If you’ve never heard of chocoflan, it’s essentially a cake where the batters trade places during the baking process so you end up with flan on the top and a chocolate cake on the bottom.

I have so much to write about today that I have no idea where I even want to start.

I feel like like always has a way of changing things up in an instant just when you think everything is falling into place. Six weeks ago, I had the honor to deliver a keynote at Texas A&M for the The Student Conference on Latinx Affairs, and it was such a rewarding experience getting to speak to these college students, and getting to listen to their stories, giving them advice and them sharing what my work means to them.

It was a very emotional experience, and I think it was a bit of a therapy session for all of us. I got to share with them many bits and pieces that I hadn’t shared with anyone else; my coming out story, dealing with depression and the struggle with my parents disapproving of what I aspired to be when I grew up.

I left the conference feeling confident in my work, being proud of being able to represent my culture in a landscape where there isn’t much representation, and I left feeling with a sense of responsibility to keep doing what I’m doing to ensure our stories and voices are continuously heard.

And then, just 3 days after we got back from Texas, or dog Mose, unexpectedly passed away.

I wasn’t ready for him to go, and everything surrounding his passing was so frustrating. We had been taking him to the vet continuously to have his nose looked at because he kept having breathing issues, and every single time a vet would tell us he had an infection and would prescribe antibiotics and nothing ever worked.

He had a biopsy done for cancer that came back clear just a few days before we were supposed to head to Texas and we didn’t realize that a week later we’d be taking him in to get a bloody nose cleaned up, only to be told we had to put him down because there was in fact a cancerous tumor in his nose, or he’d bleed out at home.

I was so angry, and I was so hurt that I couldn’t take him to the park one last time, that I couldn’t feed him a loaf of bread because carbs were his favorite thing in the world. He was just laying in our lap, dazed and confused from having been sedated for his bloody nose, and I just couldn’t bare to look at him like that. I didn’t want that to be my last memory of him..

He gave us a lot of laughs, a lot of cuddles, and he will never be forgotten. It’s been six weeks since his passing, and I still find myself accidentally calling his name sometimes, singing to him, wishing he was still around.

I tried getting back to work and everything I kept making kept failing, and it was frustrating. I realized the other day that I needed to talk about him before I was going to be able to start developing recipes and getting to blog again.

Mose, I hope you’re somewhere out there getting endless car rides, making someone else laugh with your one-of-a-kind personality, getting to sleep on a comfy bed somewhere with plenty of carbs around.

Te extraño, y te quiero mucho.

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4.50 from 2 votes

Café de Olla Chocoflan

Course Dessert

Cuisine Mexican

Keyword Cake, chocoflan, Flan, Mexican Flan

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Servings 12

Calories 359.69kcal

Author Esteban Castillo

Ingredients

• For the Flan:
• 14 oz can condensed milk
• 12 oz can evaporated milk
• 1/4 cup whole coffee beans crushed up roughly
• 1 4-5 inch Cinnamon Stick broken in half
• 3 inch strip of orange peel try not to get a lot of the white pith
• pinch of salt
• 2 oz cream cheese softened
• 4 eggs room temperature
• 1 ½ teaspoon Vanilla extract
• For the Chocolate cake:
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1  teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• 6 tablespoons  unsalted butter room temperature
• ½ cup coffee
• ¼ cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs

Instructions

• Preheat your oven to 350º F.
• Start by steeping the milks with the coffee and cinnamon for the flan. In a medium sized saucepan combine the condensed and evaporated milks together with the coffee, cinnamon stick, orange peel, and pinch of salt. Bring the mixture to just below a simmer then turn off the heat and set aside to steep and cool for at least 15 minutes.
• To make the cake, sift the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda directly into the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix on the lowest setting with the paddle attachment just until combined then add the cubed up butter and continue mixing on low speed until the mixture resembles wet sand. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl if needed.
• Combine the coffee and buttermilk in a liquid measuring cup with the vanilla then slowly add that to the dry ingredients/butter mixture with the mixer running on low. Add the eggs one at a time, then after the second egg scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat the mixture for a full minute. Set aside while you finish the flan.
• Strain the milks out into a blender (I used a reusable metal coffee filter) then add the cream cheese, eggs, and vanilla. Blend until the cream cheese is completely blended in there on medium speed, I go for a full 30 seconds.
• Liberally grease a 10-12 cup bundt pan with non-stick cooking spray then evenly add the cake batter, smoothing out the top. Carefully ladle in the flan so you disturb the cake batter as little as possible then transfer to a large baking dish or roasting pan that the bundt pan can fit into. Grease a piece of aluminum foil and place it greased side down onto the bundt pan, folding it over the edges to loosely seal it. Place this into the oven then pour hot water (from the tap is fine) into the roasting pan or baking dish until it’s about 2-3” full.
• Bake the flan for 1 hour 40 minutes, checking at the 1 hour 30 minute mark, using a skewer inserted into the cake to make sure it’s baked through, with little to no crumbs sticking to the skewer when you pull it out.
• Carefully remove the bundt pan from the roasting pan and let it cool to room temperature before placing it in the fridge to cool completely, at least a couple hours. Once you’re ready to serve carefully run a knife around any edges that didn’t pull away from the edge then invert onto a serving platter, carefully shaking it up and down if it’s being difficult but if it was greased properly you shouldn’t have any major issues. Serve with whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon if desired.