I've always known what dulce de leche was, and have tasted it in ice cream and other flavored desserts, but I hadn't actually tried it by itself. My best friend from college has a husband from Argentina, and when he told me that he would eat dulce de leche straight out of the jar with a spoon, and could almost finish an entire jar, I thought, "What?! That is crazy!" In my mind I was picturing eating spoonfuls of straight caramel by the jar. Which I thought was crazy.
But when I made my first batch of dulce de leche, I finally understood what he meant. This stuff is addicting! It is like caramel, but soft, and almost pudding-like. I found myself sneaking spoonfuls of it from the fridge, using a new spoon each time, until I had accumulated a big pile of used spoons in the sink. I had only made one jar with which I had planned on making multiple desserts, but soon it became clear that I would barely have enough to make my Hello Kitty alfajores with!
I have now made three batches of this stuff! (Well, actually four batches, if you count that I made double the amount with the last batch!) For the first two batches, I used this recipe from David Lebovitz (the recipe is also in his awesome ice cream book), where the method was to roast sweetened condensed milk and a pinch sea salt in a baking dish, covered with foil, and placed in a water bath. The directions were to roast it for 90 minutes, but I ended up doing 3 hours because I wanted a darker caramel. Once it was out of the oven, I whisked in a bit of vanilla extract to add to the flavor of the caramel.
And for the last batch, I read somewhere online about cooking it in a slow cooker water bath instead, so I tried it out with my rice cooker (set on the slow cooker setting). This method was a lot easier because you didn't have to keep checking on it and refilling the water, however it took about 13 hours in the slow cooker to get the color caramel that I wanted! So I suppose there are pros and cons to both methods. ;)
This dulce de leche is so versatile - with it I have made three batches of Hello Kitty alfajores, a batch of ice cream, and I still have so many ideas on what to use it for! Posts to come on that later!
Enjoy!
I have now made three batches of this stuff! (Well, actually four batches, if you count that I made double the amount with the last batch!) For the first two batches, I used this recipe from David Lebovitz (the recipe is also in his awesome ice cream book), where the method was to roast sweetened condensed milk and a pinch sea salt in a baking dish, covered with foil, and placed in a water bath. The directions were to roast it for 90 minutes, but I ended up doing 3 hours because I wanted a darker caramel. Once it was out of the oven, I whisked in a bit of vanilla extract to add to the flavor of the caramel.
And for the last batch, I read somewhere online about cooking it in a slow cooker water bath instead, so I tried it out with my rice cooker (set on the slow cooker setting). This method was a lot easier because you didn't have to keep checking on it and refilling the water, however it took about 13 hours in the slow cooker to get the color caramel that I wanted! So I suppose there are pros and cons to both methods. ;)
This dulce de leche is so versatile - with it I have made three batches of Hello Kitty alfajores, a batch of ice cream, and I still have so many ideas on what to use it for! Posts to come on that later!
