Gluten Free Chocolate and Pear Flan
I’ve had this Medium account for a few years with the intention of sharing my gluten free recipes and my research into diet and health, I realised that I had shared a few recipes on Twitter and thought it would be a good idea to put these into a proper shareable document.
Alas my pear tree has gone on strike this year but this gluten free, pear and chocolate flan has been a consistent favourite in my family for a few years. Serve with a raspberry compote, vanilla ice cream or a dollop of cream, a dash of alcohol in the cream works really well for the adults too.
Ingredients
✔ For the pastry
50 grams of ground almonds (Marks and Spencer, has no peanut warnings)
100 grams rice flour (Doves Farm, Sainsbury’s)
25 grams caster sugar
80 grams butter (softened)
4 desert spoons of water to bind the dough
✔ For the filling
100 grams butter
85 grams caster sugar
120 grams ground almonds
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence
2 Large eggs
185 grams melted dark chocolate (then leave to cool for 3 minutes)
3 or 4 Pears 🍐 quartered, peeled and cored
Method
- Pre-heat oven on 200 C.
- Mix all the pastry ingredients to form a large dough ball to roll-out
- As this pastry is gluten free it works to put the dough ball into the centre of 9 inch flan dish (grease the dish with a little butter first) then roll with a small rolling pin. Push / crimp the pastry into the edged to create a flan base.
- Before starting the filling, place the pastry case into the oven to blind bake for 12 minutes
- Whilst the base is firming up, mix the eggs, chocolate, vanilla essence and ground almonds with a spatula, stirring well
- Remove the pastry case from the oven and use the spatula to spread into the corners
- Create a fan / circle using your pears, pushing them lightly into the gooey mixture, I usually make a round piece for the centre by shaping
- Bake for a further 30 minutes, until the chocolate ganache rises and mostly bakes set
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool slight, then dust with icing sugar
- Serve warm, but equally good (perhaps better) cold the next day