How hundreds of leche flan doughnuts are made in a New York apartment

• Kimberly Camara runs Kora out of her small Queens, New York, apartment, making over 500 doughnuts every week.
• Kora's signature doughnut is the leche flan — a brioche doughnut filled with leche cream, topped with flan and burnt caramel, then dusted with powdered sugar.
• The recipe comes from Kim's grandmother's recipe book, which Kim found after her grandmother passed in January of 2020.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Lisa Paradise: A box of brioche doughnuts freshly rolled, then fried and filled with flavors inspired by cherished family recipes. At Kora, here in Queens, they're doing just that, working tirelessly in a tiny New York City apartment to produce hundreds of doughnuts. And they are so good that every single week, they sell out in less than a minute. Let's take a look.

Customer: It took about three tries.

Lisa: Did you literally just sit on your computer until the order time? Like you're trying to buy, like, Beyoncé tickets? Customer: Yeah.

Customer: They're worth all the work and strategy. For maybe the seventh try, I finally got it.

Lisa: It took you seven weeks?

Plush brioche doughnuts filled with leche cream, topped with leche flan, and gently sprinkled with powdered sugar. And while some food in New York is designed with pseudo-exclusivity to build up hype, these particular doughnuts are exclusive purely out of necessity. They're made in this small Woodside kitchen outfitted with a KitchenAid, a single oven, and two small fryers that work together to produce over 500 doughnuts every single week for a growing customer base. Are you tired? 'Cause I'm tired listening to you talk. [laughs]

Kim Camara: Oh, we're so tired, all the time.

Lisa: Kim, along with her boyfriend and Kora co-owner, Kevin, begin prepping for the week's sales on Monday. And while Kora's doughnut flavors change week to week, the leche flan doughnut is the star of the show. It begins with a whole lot of egg yolks, evaporated and condensed milk, a pinch of salt, and some vanilla, all combined with an immersion blender until it's silky smooth. Kim boils hot caramel just shy of burning for a slightly bittersweet tang, then pours it onto a tray, laying on the flan mixture before popping the whole thing into the oven, where the flan is torched to remove any air bubbles before it's baked for about an hour and a half, until set. Each tray only makes about 35 doughnuts, and the oven only fits one tray, so Kim needs to repeat this process at least four more times to make enough doughnuts to fill orders. The flan is left to cool and set in the fridge until the next day, when they kick it into high gear. Kim's mom, Titi Babes, glazes doughnuts in one corner, while some coworkers meticulously pipe and decorate in the other, all while Kim fries dough and Kevin fills it. To finish the signature doughnut, rings are cut into the freshly fried dough. Then it's filled to the brim with pureed flan cream. The leche flan is cut into rounds then gently layered into the doughnut before the whole thing is lightly sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Customer: So, I'm Filipino, and the flavors are just so true to what you would imagine Filipino dessert tastes like. But it's just brought to a more modern, contemporary format through the doughnut.

Lisa: The flan recipe fell into Kim's hands in some tragic, yet serendipitous timing, when Kim's grandmother Kora passed in January 2020 and in sorting through some of her belongings, she stumbled across something pretty special.

Kim: And we found her leche flan recipe in her old notebook. I wish that she was still here to see this and see what an impact she's left on me, and how everything about this business has been built because of what she did for me in my life. Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna start tearing up.

Lisa: If you cry, I'll start.

Kim: Oh, my God, don't cry. I see you crying.

Lisa: When the pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders hit in March, Kim, like so many of us, took to baking to pass the time.

Kim: During quarantine, when I was doing a lot of baking, I had leftover brioche. So, yeah, I was like, let me just get some oil on the stove, and I'll fry them off like doughnuts.

Lisa: She took to social media to sell some doughnuts to family and friends, and to her surprise sold over 175 on the very first day. Working simply through word of mouth, the couple dropped an order form every Monday at 3 p.m., each week selling more and more until it became almost impossible for customers to snag a box. Grandmother's recipe book in hand, Kim and Kevin began building a business that pays homage to her grandmother in every way, down to the logo, which uses her handwritten letters lifted from the book.

Kim: When we go downstairs and we hand a box to people, especially people that are having it for the first time, these doughnuts that have been so elusive and so hard to get, and just the pure joy on their faces is enough.

Lisa: Yo, I haven't had doughnuts in months, and I'm so excited. I've been watching them make these for two days straight, and it's just been straight torture not being able to try them. Oh, f--- yes! The brioche doughnut by itself is light and airy. It's perfectly fried; it's not greasy. The cream on the bottom hits your mouth the second you bite into it, so you immediately get that leche flan flavor. And then you bite into the flan itself, and it's not dense, it's not too jiggly, it's just creamy. It melts in your mouth the second that you bite into it. The burnt caramel on top gives it this bitterness that really brings the whole thing together. It really levels out the sweetness. As far as desserts go, this is one of those ones that you feel like you can bite into it and it doesn't feel heavy, it doesn't feel dense. It tastes like it came out of your grandmother's kitchen, but if your grandmother was a professional pastry chef.