The Doodle Cookbook: flan

Well...the flan recipe is a major fail that was just waiting to happen. I decided to try it out yesterday and I found myself making the ugliest flan/puddi I've ever seen as well as burning my finger and melting a rubber spatula. My boyfriend suggested I redo it, after I showed him pictures of how it turned out, but I decided I'd post it anyways as a heads up for that recipe (I recommend not using it, I'm going to try finding a better recipe to work with and actually test it out before doodling it out so I don't waste my time) as well as a way to learn from my mistake. I am by no means professional and I'd hate for anyone to think that I am, try a recipe, watch it fail, and complain to me.

Well let's start out with....
Failures In the Recipe

The ingredients seemed alright, the flan tasted good and the texture was good very simplified version.
The caramelized sugar part for the topping gave me some trouble, it was a disaster only in the sense that I ended up melting my rubber spatula (lol, what was I thinking) and burning my finger.
The custard part... I had no problems while mixing it together or anything like that.
The cooking time was WAY off, 6 minutes my ass. After 6 minutes in the oven it was wasn't even close to being cooked or custard-like at all, it was extremely liquidy. I ended up having to cook it for about 20 minutes and even then it was still a bit runny in the middle.
The recipe lacked an important thing, according to my mum, and that would be that when cooking your flan in the pan it should be surrounded by water in another pan. I'm guessing the reason being for this is to keep the sugar warm enough to where it won't burn. Though for the last 5 minutes of cooking I did put it in water because mum said to do it.

Pictures:

Flan in a pan surrounded by water.