I started making flan months ago, obsessed with all things creamy (custards, mousses, puddings, and curds), and when the dust settled there were two contestants standing for the final round-Flan and Creme(less)Brulee. To pick a winner I was looking for high scores in three different categories: texture, taste and ease of preparation. With equal marks in taste, the brulee took a slight lead in the ease of preparation category. That left one round: texture.

To be honest, I expected the creme(less) brulee to take home the gold medal. Appearing on far more restaurant menus, creme brulee holds more clout with American audiences than flan. And I was swayed by its star power, I was drawn into its vortex of celebrity and hardly glanced at the flan. What a mistake!

Now, if you’re sitting at your computer shaking two brain cells together in an attempt to figure out the difference between creme brulee and flan, let me save you a trip to Wikipedia. Creme brulee: more cream, less egg. Flan: more egg, less cream. It is that simple. Creme brulee is literally “burnt cream,” it is the flavor of slightly thickened and set cream. Flan, on the other hand, lets eggs shine as both the structure and flavor of the dessert.

It was this small but crucial difference that finally put flan in first place. Because I was making both custards without dairy, the fat content was significantly lower than traditional recipes. While I love the flavor of vanilla scented cream, the dairy free creme brulee presented one major problem-it took too long to set in the oven. By the time it came out and cooled, it was slightly grainy. When I took it out earlier, to avoid the grainy quality, it never fully set and left me with ramekins full of soupy custard. This is when my love affair with flan began. The additional egg in the custard base meant that the lack of dairy fat wouldn’t be a problem-this custard would set because of its pure eggyness.

Once I settled on flan as the winner of the 2010 Custard Games, it was time to glam it up a bit and give it the star treatment it deserved. I made batches of flan with various flavored extracts, but they left a heavy and unbalanced flavor through the custard. Realizing I wanted something subtler, I steeped the coconut milk and vanilla with tea bags in three different batches-raspberry, early grey, and rooibos. The tea flavoring method had two significant advantages: It was unbelievable easy, and the tea bags left  the custard gently scented, exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, when blended with the egg mixture and baked the tea-steeped coconut milk left the custards and unpleasant shade of grey (fine for serving myself, horrid for company).

In the end I realized the easiest way to flavor the custard was with a few slices of fresh fruit. I sliced up some bananas and placed them in the caramel sauce in the bottom of each ramekin. When I ladled in the custard, the banana slices floated and mingled with the delicious liquid. As everything baked together, the flavors blended and distributed throughout the custard. I can’t think of a fruit I wouldn’t like in here, peaches, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, plums-everything makes my mouth water.