Pillsbury came out with a line of highly loved traditional Mexican desserts and I have been dying to get my hands on them. They have Mexican wedding cookies, cortadillo cake, and chocoflan. After months of searching I finally found the Chocoflan mix at my local store and immediately had to give it a try. Disclaimer: I have never eaten chocoflan. I have enjoyed flan and obviously chocolate cake but never the two together.
Looking at recipes for chocoflan, it is clear this mix simplifies the process and makes it easier for anyone to bake. I was really surprised at how easy this mix is to prepare. To start out, you make the flan mixture. Combine the dry packet with heated up milk and water, then whisk until fully combined and no longer lumpy. Then set it to the side to prepare the cake batter. For the chocolate cake mix, you combine the dry packet with water oil and an egg, just like any other cake. The process was the same as any cake and the batter tastes like Pillsbury’s chocolate cake batter. The flan mixture tasted like caramel and was really delightful.
Next, you put the chocolate cake batter into the pan. Let me stop right here to confess, I have the wrong pan. I own a 9inch spring form smooth Bundt pan. The only similarity to the required bundt pan is the center cone. However I really wanted to eat this dessert so I used what I had and accept any user errors as my own. It is a little too big and will not have the cool ridges on the final product. I also had to line the pan with tin foil to avoid the flan mixture from spilling out. Since it’s a spring form pan it comes apart in two pieces and this leaves room for liquid to escape. Fingers crossed we have avoided this crisis. So inside my foil lined pan, I poured the cake batter and spread it out to cover the bottom. Then I poured the flan mixture on top of the cake batter. It was supposed to sit on top and when it bakes it sinks underneath the cake batter but the cake batter immediately started coming up so it looked really weird.
I put the cake in the oven to bake for 20 minutes. The recipe suggests 20-25 minutes but I know that my pan is a little larger and that bake times on box mixes are rarely correct so I kept an eye on it. The cake was fully cooked at 26 minutes. I pulled it out of the oven and it was a little swirly and weird looking on the top but it had to rest so I set it aside to cool for half an hour at room temperature and then another half an hour in the refrigerator.
I am very glad I put the tin foil under my pan as a bit of the flan did escape. However, once flipped and plated it looked pretty good. The edges didn’t show the two layers very clearly but once it was sliced, there was a visible hard line showing where the cake stopped and the flan began. After the flan was flipped and plated, I added the premade caramel sauce on top. I drizzled it all over the top of the flan and it was ready to eat.
The flan was the perfect consistency and it made the cake extra moist. The flan with the caramel and chocolate were very complimentary flavors and the contrasting textures were a perfect pair. This reminds me of that brownie with a cheesecake swirl mix that we tried previously that wasn’t great, this is like the superior version of that. Funnily enough, both Pillsbury.
This mix was surprisingly simple and really really tasty. I think this line of traditional Mexican dessert box mixes was a great move on Pillsbury’s part and puts them above the other big companies like Betty crocker and Duncan Hines.
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