Leche asada (Chilean baked milk custard) — caramel-bottomed custard with a golden skin

The cause is almost always temperature: without a water bath, or with the oven too hot (above 170 °C), the custard boils inside the dish. When eggs exceed roughly 85-90 °C abruptly, the proteins over-coagulate and the mixture separates, resulting in a grainy or pitted texture (what pastry chefs call syneresis). The solution is always the water bath and strict temperature control: 160 °C maximum. Another common mistake is beating the eggs too vigorously and incorporating air: the foam creates bubbles that turn into craters during baking.

The water bath (bain-marie) serves two purposes: it acts as a temperature buffer (water cannot exceed 100 °C, so the custard cooks gently without any risk of boiling) and it distributes heat evenly around the dish, eliminating the hot spots in the oven that would set the edges before the centre. Without a water bath, the dish is exposed directly to oven heat (160-180 °C), the egg over-sets and the texture becomes grainy and pitted. The same principle applies to flan, crème brûlée and baked cheesecake.

The main difference is in the method and the resulting texture. Leche asada is baked ('roasted') in the oven, which gives it a golden, toasted skin on the surface — its defining feature. Traditional flan is set only by gentle steam in the oven water bath and its surface does not brown. In terms of the mixture: leche asada has a higher ratio of milk to egg, which makes it slightly firmer and more 'set', less silky than flan. Both use caramel in the dish, but leche asada is more rustic, with the golden surface as its hallmark.

Yes, using a stovetop bain-marie. Pour the custard over the caramel in individual ramekins or a metal mould. Place the moulds in a large pot with hot water reaching halfway up the sides, cover the pot tightly and cook over very low heat for 45-55 minutes until the custard is set. The key difference: without the oven there will be no golden skin on the surface, which is leche asada's most characteristic feature. The result will resemble a home-style flan more than traditional leche asada. Some cooks use a kitchen blowtorch on the chilled surface to achieve the golden effect.

The minimum is 3 hours, but the ideal is overnight (8-12 hours). Chilling serves two purposes: it finishes setting the texture (the centre is still wobbly just out of the oven) and it allows the caramel at the base to partially dissolve into the liquid released by the custard, forming the pourable caramel sauce that flows out when you unmould it. Leche asada that is still warm from the oven is always harder to unmould and the texture is not at its best. Serve cold or slightly cool.

Medium amber: the melted sugar should be dark-honey coloured and smell sweet, with no smoke. Too pale and it just tastes of sugar; past amber it turns bitter in seconds, because it keeps cooking in the hot mould. Take it off the heat as soon as it colours and tilt the mould to coat the base — in the oven it liquefies into the sauce.