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The Best Flancocho Ever — Chocolate Cake + Flan

Flancocho is half flan and half bizcocho, or cake

Flancocho is the choco-licious creamy dessert of our Latino dreams. It’s half flan, half chocolate cake or bizcocho (which is how you get the word: flan-cocho), and 100% delicioso. This combo postre marries two of our all-time favorites, and it is a new classic we’ll be making all year (and for birthdays and even Christmas!).

That’s how good it is.

If your Instagram feed is anything like ours, you’ve been seeing a flood of flancochos lately, and we are here for it. Except, traditionally this two-for-one dessert is made with vanilla cake. And vanilla is good, but chocolate is even better, right? Let’s give chocolate some flancocho love this holiday.

Beginning with this flancocho, which calls for chocolate cake mix. And not just any mix. The most famoso of all chocolate bizcocho mixes in our humble Latino opinion: Dominican cake mix from the legendary Angela’s Bakery. (See our unboxing of this bizcocho mix here.) But you can use any chocolate box mix and it comes out delicioso!

If you are from the D.R. you know: Dominican cake is famous for being light as air, with a meringue layer called suspiro on top. And if you live near New York City, then you really know: the place to buy el mejor and most auténtico Dominican cake in the triborough area is at a neighborhood store in Brooklyn called Angela’s Bakery. The shop is named after its gifted Dominican home cook/owner who turned her baking side hustle into a sweets hub for the Latino community in 2003. For those of us not in New York, Angela’s makes a Dominican cake box mix we can mail-order to get the bakery’s signature sabor in our own cocina.

We called Angela’s Bakery to ask about flancocho and — no sorpresa — they are on it. Turns out they’ve been experimenting with this custardy take on cake and loving the results.

Wow! Seriously mind blown by how delicious it is. The flan and Dominican cake mix complement each other perfectly. I am now planning Thanksgiving with flancocho as one of the desserts. That says it all!

Dominican home cook and first-time flancochera Belqui Ortiz-Millili of Belqui’s Twist

”A little while ago, my brother’s friend asked me: ’Have you ever had flancocho?’ And honestly, I hadn’t,” says Angela’s daughter, Rose, who has been running the bakery since Angela retired a few years ago. ”‘You have to try it!’ he told us.”

Rose may not have known what flancocho was then, but this she knew, immediately: “I love flan. When I talk about flan, my mouth starts to water.” Rose and her family had to try it. Her brother’s friend came over and with Rose and the shop crew, they started baking. They used her mother Angela’s family-famous flan recipe and mixed it with the shop’s proprietary Dominican chocolate box mix.

The results? Flantástico, Rose reports. ”Oh my god, it was rico, rico, rico,” she says. ”The chocolate and the caramel are so good together.”

belqui flancocho
Belqui Ortiz-Millili of Belqui’s Twist tries her hand at making her first Dominican cake flancocho—with stellar results.

Dominican Cook Belqui Makes her First Flancocho!

To check out Angela’s Bakery flancocho in time for the holiday baking season, we decided to try it for ourselves here at Familia Kitchen. We immediately thought of one of our favorite Dominican home cooks Belqui Ortiz-Millili of the cooking blog Belqui’s Twist. For her next Belqui’s Twist video, could she — an admitted non-baker — bake this flancocho with Angela’s personal family flan recipe and Dominican chocolate mix?

Belqui said yes. But, she confessed: She was pretty nervous.

”It was a bit intimidating because Dominican cake is not the simplest to make. I consider myself a cook, by the way: Not a baker. But there are no other Dominican cake mixes on the market, which makes this a truly one-of-a-kind product. I am an only-Dominican-cake fan, so I have never made a boxed cake before. I have had zero interest in it,” Belqui admits.

But because Belqui and her family are big flan fans, she decided to push through her jitters. She was soon in her kitchen, whipping up flan and mixing cake batter, following the recipe Angela’s Bakery sent.

Thankfully, Belqui reported, ”the instructions did give me peace of mind as a non-baker. Before I started making this flancocho, I couldn’t comprehend how the flan and the chocolate cake stayed in their own layers, separate from each other, throughout the baking process. I was dumbfounded when I saw that the flan and the chocolate cake did just that. It was like, ’I go here and you go there.’”

And then, when she made it and realized they really do stay apart, each in their own half of the flancocho mold, she was delighted, says Belqui. ”Wow! Seriously mind blown, not just by that, but also by how delicious it is. The flan and chocolate cake mix complement each other perfectly.”

So perfectly that Belqui the non-baker is now Belqui the baker, at least when it comes to flancocho, she says. “I am now planning Thanksgiving with flancocho as one of the desserts! That says it all.”

Ready to Try Angela’s Family Recipe for Flancocho?

The Best Flancocho Ever—Dominican Cake + Flan

Recipe by Angela Rosario of Angela’s Bakery
4.5 from 18 votes
Cuisine: Dominican
Servings

8

servings
Prep time

20

minutes
Cooking time

1

hour 

30

minutes

Ingredients

  • For the Caramel
  • 1 cup granulated sugar

  • 1/2 cup water

  • For the Flan
  • 5 large eggs, room temperature

  • 12 oz sweetened condensed milk

  • 12 oz evaporated milk

  • 1 Tbsp vanilla extract

  • 1 Tbsp rum

  • For the Dominican-Style Chocolate Cake
  • 1 box chocolate cake mix

  • 6 eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten

  • 16 oz unsalted butter

  • 1 cup pineapple juice

  • 1/2 cup corn oil

Directions

  • Make the Caramel Topping
  • Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter or grease a bundt pan—thoroughly.
  • Pour the sugar into a skillet set to medium-high heat. Stir the sugar constantly while it caramelizes. The sugar will first start to clump at first, but once it gets hot enough, it will start to turn a golden color. And then it will melt into a liquidy dark brown caramel.
  • Keep stirring until all the sugar has been liquified and there are no clumps left in the skillet. (Do not leave the stove while doing this. Your caramel can go from perfect to burnt in the blink of an eye!)
  • Now, be careful with this next step: Carefully and slowly pour the water into the pan with the caramelized sugar. The water will probably splash, so stand as far back as you can so you don’t burn yourself.
  • You will notice the caramel hardens up when you add the water. Keep stirring with your spatula until all the sugar has re-melted into a thin, light syrup. When the syrup is smooth and back to its deep amber color, remove from the stove and immediately pour the hot caramel into your greased bundt cake pan.
  • Swirl the pan around so that the caramel spreads evenly across the bottom of the entire bundt pan. Very carefully rotate the pan so that the caramel also coats the sides. Keep rotating the caramel until it cools and hardens to the point that it no longer moves around. Set the cake pan aside and allow the caramel to cool and harden.
  • Prepare the Cake Batter
  • Make the cake mix according to the box instructions: beat the eggs, butter, pineapple juice and corn oil in a bowl. Set aside.
  • Make the Flan
  • In a blender, place the eggs, sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, rum and vanilla extract. Blend on high until fully mixed.
  • Mix Your Half Flan, Half Cake Batter
  • Slowly pour the blended flan mix over the hardened caramel in the bundt pan. Tilt to spread it evenly.
  • Spread the chocolate cake batter across the top of the flan mix.
  • Bake Your Flancocho
  • Place the bundt pan with the flan and cake mix in a water bath. (Angela and Rose usually use a large turkey-roasting pan, but any large pan will do, as long as you are able to add water to it, up to the middle of the height of the bundt pan.)
  • Bake for 90 minutes (although it might take less time, depending on your oven, says Rose). Starting at 50 minutes from the time you put it in the oven, check your flan. Insert a toothpick in the cake to make sure it comes out clean. This means it’s done baking. If not, keep baking and checking every 5 minutes—until the toothpick comes out with no trace of flan or batter.
  • Let the flan cool. Then transfer the bundt pan to the fridge. Let it chill for at least 3 to 4 hours and preferably overnight.
  • Ready for the Party? Unmold and Serve
  • When ready to plate and serve, remove the flancocho from the fridge. Using the same large pan you used for the water bath, add a couple inches of new hot water. Sit the bundt pan in the hot water for a few minutes. This will help loosen the caramel from the bottom by melting it slightly.
  • Give the bundt pan a little jiggle. If the flancocho moves around, you are good to go. Otherwise, place it back in the hot water for a few more minutes and try again.
  • When it is jiggling just right, place your serving plate on top of the mold, count to three and flip your flancocho onto the plate!
  • Put your plated flancocho back in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve it muy frío. Féliz whatever you are celebrating!

Notes

  • Be very careful when working with caramel. It can get extremely hot and can cause severe burns if you accidentally splash it on yourself. Consider wearing oven mitts and handle working with caramel very carefully.
  • This flancocho takes 90 minutes to bake because the bundt cake is so deep. Our Familia Kitchen Test Kitchen team found the time surprising at first, since flan usually takes only about 50 minutes to bake, but it truly does take that long.
flancocho
flancocho
Angela and Rose of Angela's Bakery Dominican Cake
Daughter Rose and mom Angela, left to right, of Angela’s Bakery in Brooklyn. This flancocho recipe is made with Angela’s very own family flan recipe and their Dominican chocolate cake mix. For more of their family recipes, check out their D.R.-style mangú con los tres (actually dos) golpes and pork chops or chuletas with arroz con gandules.
Flancocho 2

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    1. We have to agree with you! Best we’ve ever eaten, too. We made it for the first time since it was sent to us yesterday morning and served it to friends last night. They could not stop telling us how much they loved it. The dark, rich, airy chocolate makes the sweet, rum-flavored flan even more delicious tasting.