When I posted recently about making dulce de leche from condensed milk, Adriana and Rebecca were kind enough to give me recipes for cooking it from first principles using full cream milk and sugar. How could I resist?
It’s a long process, but an easy one, particularly if you have to be in the kitchen for a few hours anyway, as I did last night. And the end result is very different to the microwave version – it’s soft, silky and deep caramel brown – the long cooking time imbues it with a richness in colour and flavour that can’t be achieved by the quicker process. Both have their place, but oh my, this slow cooked milk jam was really something else…
- 4 litres full cream milk (I used UHT)
- 1 kilogram white sugar
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), sifted
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (we used homemade)
1. In a very large stock pot, pour all the ingredients and bring to boil over a high heat. Make sure it’s a big pot, as four litres of milk rising up in a rolling boil can be quite intimidating otherwise! Don’t go anywhere, you’ll need to make sure it doesn’t boil over. At the beginning you’ll need to stand there and adjust the heat up and down as required, while you stir, to ensure the pot doesn’t overflow, but after a while the milk will settle into a regular boil.
2. Boil until the milk changes colour and reduces in volume. The instructions here were a little vague, but we basically boiled the pot over a high heat until it had reduced by half, which took about an hour. Over that time, the colour gradually darkened to a light milk coffee shade.
3. Turn the heat down and cook the milk over medium to medium-low until it darkens even further and thickens, watching it carefully and stirring often to ensure it doesn’t catch on the bottom. If you’re not able to be diligent, it’s probably best to turn the heat down to very low at this point, making sure you come back to stir it regularly. This stage took another ¾ hour.
4. Once it starts to thicken, turn the heat down to very low, stirring frequently, until the dulce de leche turns a medium to dark caramel brown. It needs to be fussed over at this point, to ensure it doesn’t scorch and burn. The finished product is very hot (don’t ask me how I know) and has a thick pouring consistency. It will set up further as it cools. Total cooking time was about 2½ hours. Rebecca suggests that you stir in a few tablespoons of honey at this point, but Pete’s not a particular fan, so we left it out.
5. Finally, fill the sink with a few inches of cold water, and sit the pot into it, being careful not to splash water into the caramel. Stir the mixture for a few minutes – Adriana’s recipe says that this thickens the mixture, but I suspect the main aim is to stop it from cooking further and burning (as I said, at this stage, it’s very hot!).
Our four litres of milk produced five and a half jars of wickedly good dulce de leche . One jar has gone to Maude, another to Patrick, and the remainder are tucked away safely in the fridge. Now the fun starts – planning what to do with it!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
How long does this last in a jar? Well, I realize it probably gets gobbled up rather quickly, but theoretically. :)
This is terrible, where’s mine? :) I don’t think I can bear this much longer. Why did you have to start making one of my favourite substances in the known world when I am trying not to think about sweet things… Why? – she looked around the room and found no answer…..
But whinging apart, on a scale of 1 – 10 how much better is it than the microwave version? Because it looks very very good, Oh YES ! I think there must be room in life for a dulce de leche cookbook with a caramelised white chocolate sub section, don’t you?
Jo
This is the one for me. I have no microwave and much prefer the idea of using whole milk rather than condensed milk. And what a fabulous idea as present material – along with a few recipe ideas I guess.
Mamma mia. I saw that comment on the previous post and I knew you’d try it … but I had no idea that it would be your next post. Good on you, that is fabulous.
Little Piece, I’m not really sure! Some recipes I’ve seen online suggest that it’s good for at least a month, but I suspect it will be fine for longer than that in the fridge.
Jo, if I could, I would mail you a jar, but I think it needs to be kept refrigerated. I think you could make it on a smaller scale, but if I was going to boil something for over two hours, I wanted to make it worthwhile! On a scale of 1 to 10, the microwave version is (in my opinion) about a 5, the fresh milk version a 9, and caramelised white chocolate a 10! The micro version is great when you need some in a hurry, but the fresh milk version is darker and richer and gloopier.
Choclette, your absolutely right about it being a great gift – I’m having trouble keeping it in the house! :)
Gillian, thanks! You know I can’t resist things like that… :)
Ooh, by the way, Patrick, who is French, told me that in France dulce de leche is known as confiture de lait, which again translates to milk jam.
Oh you are a crazy woman. What are you going to do with that much DDL?! It makes my teeth hurt just to read about all that sugar!
Here is a suggestion for using some though – those amazing caramel shortbread biscuits you can get in some cafes. A lot are an imitation version which are not nice, but the real version is a very fine thing indeed. Your DDL needs to be a lot drier/thicker and it gets sandwiched between two rounds of shorbread, sprinkle crunchy sugar on top and bake. The outside edges of the biscuits and thick caramel centre get even more caramelised/burnt. Yum yum. I think maybe they are baked in some kind of cylinderical mold or something that stops the caramel from spreading (?). Can you please try, perfect the recipe and then tell me how to make it?! :)
This looks incredible! I remember my Mom making this for us kiddos. Glad I found your blog!
Ever tried it with goat milk? For cajeta?
Still, dulce is one of my favorite things. I make it and squirrel it back in the fridge–and have been known to slurp down a spoonful before bed!
hi celia! i tracked you down from one of your comments on real food has curves :)
so glad i did! you have an amazing blog, great photos and this dulce the leche looks divine. i’m sure i’d manage to burn a hole in the pot if i tried it. anyhoo: mark is right on all counts and i’ll be following closely! cheers!
Diana and Dana, thank you for stopping by! :)
Mark, goat milk – I’ve only just barely tried it with cow’s milk! :) But it was so nice that I’m thinking of investing in expensive jersey cow milk to see if it makes a difference…
Spice Girl, the dulce de leche would be too runny for that, but I was thinking of using it as a filling in cakes? I might try whipping some with cream as well to see if it make a good centre for profiteroles (now that I know how to make choux pastry – thanks Mark! :)).
celia, it does! i made choux filled with chantilly and ddl and also chantilly + salted caramel. it’s stable, works great. couldn’t decide which to love best! i also sometime use it in crostatas and galettes, i spread a layer under cheese or fruit fillings. or combined with gently stewed apples, in crepes. what i haven’t made, and must: ddl caramels. i had some at a party a while back, never asked for the recipe and now their maker moved away. and icecream, never made that either.
Dana, fantastic ideas, thank you! Good to know the DDL is stable when mixed with cream. I was just thinking it would be lovely on pastry under apples. Mind you, it would also be fantastic in those mini brioches you’ve made!
It is traditional and mildy annoying in my family to offer praise by demanding ‘where’s mine?’ Of course you don’t have to send me a jar! But sweet of you even to consider it. :) Bless you! I was sent a link to this recipe by Merchant Gourmet who market dulce de leche in England amongst other lovely ingredients, things and I had asked them if they had a recipe for brownies using their squeezey bottle chocolate dulce sauce (though this is perfectly acceptable eaten direct from the bottle hahaha). They didn’t, but the product manager sent me this link, which was kind of her – anyway this one is definitely on my list of brownies to make, whether or not I manage to follow in your steps and make my own dulce de leche ….
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2006/06/dulce_de_leche.html
Printed out and on the whiteboard for today’s baking, Jo! :) Thanks… xx
What to do with it…..boy wish I could get a jar. You could have some on porridge…..spread on some delish brioche, swirl through ice cream….and maybe end up as frosting.
I bought a jar of confiture de lait (from Paris) last year and used some as a topping on a salted chocolate caramel shortbread a while ago: so I made a shortbread base, topped with confiture de lait and on top of that, melted chocolate. LEft it to harden and then…enjoyed!
Looks lovely…..
See what you started, girlfriend? :) Today I’m planning to make the DDL brownies from the DL link that Jo left me below…
Thanks again for the inspiration.. xx
Wow – just checked out those DDL brownies, don’t they look delectable. Did you get around to making them?
Choclette, yes, post coming shortly! They were delicious!
Oh, my…. This brings me A TON of memories!
You know, I grew up enjoying dulce de leche (or, as we say in Brazil “doce de leite”) but my mom took a shortcut: she would cook a can of condensed milk in the pressure cooker
I could hardly wait for the can to cool…. when she finally opened, it, I would eat by the spoonfuls after dinner
as far as what to do with it, it goes very well as a filling for cakes, both white cakes or chocolate cakes (heck, you can even frost the cake with it!) …. you can spread over apple slices…. use as filling for crepes… make sandwich cookies… serve next to vanilla ice cream…. or apple sorbet…. gosh, this stuff is just the best thing in the known universe!
(sorry for the long comment, but you “made” me do it… :-)
Sally, thank you! :) I tried the microwave version using condensed milk earlier (there’s a link near the beginning of the post), but it wasn’t nearly as nice as this one. I love the idea of using it under chocolate, which I read about on Suelle’s blog just today…
A late reply, as I just came over your blogg..: )
I love confiture de lait but wanted to do something different with it. So I decided to flavour it like Chai Latte and it was absolutely fabulous.
Next outing will be to make it taste like espresso, well macchiato may be with all the milk in it.