Top quality ingredients and the right equipment are essential for good cooking. Flan tins come in all shapes and sizes and you are going to need a selection to produce some great tasting flans in. Take this john lewis fluted edge round flan tin (on the left), this is a rigid tin. However, as we talked about in my previous blogs on baking, why not use a flexible baking tin?, like the mastard flexible tart tin (on the right). These flexible bake ware are very versatile and make it easy to get your creation out of the tin and presented for your guests.

Some people prefer one to the other, but which ever your prefer make sure you have an array of shapes (round, rectangle, square and oblong) to meet all your cooking needs for the future, as there uses are endless.

You are also going to need your ceramic baking beans like these from John lewis you can use them over and over again. These are a must for baking pastry cases and flan cases blind.

You can also get loose base flan and tart tins too as a alternative to the other tins we have mentioned.

To make blind pastry cases which have endless applications in the kitchen and don’t forget you can make a variety of shapes and sizes and freeze them so you have them at the ready for unexpected guests.  So. simply make your pastry, whether its sweet or savoury. Roll out your pastry and place it in the tin most suitable for the recipe you are cooking. Then place a piece of greased proof paper on top of the pastry before placing your ceramic baking beans on top of this on the inside of your pastry case.  This will help to stop the pastry blistering, shrinking or rising, to give you a perfect home made pastry case.

Check out my next blog for some great recipe ideas, to use your new formed skill in preparing pastry or flan cases.