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Saturday, September 19, 2009

Dulce de Leche


I have a new food obsession-Dulce de Leche.
It started from having some Häagen-Dazs caramel cone ice cream. The caramel in it was amazing, so that led me to try their Dulce de Leche flavor which is caramel ice cream with Dulce de Leche swirled in.

So now I have to try to explain what Dulce de Leche is. In short, it's slowly heated (caramelized) sweetened milk. It's not to be confused with caramel which is slowly heated sugar. I like caramel. I love Dulce de Leche. So much that I capitalize it obviously. It's not as sticky as caramel which is maybe why I love it more. I hate when caramel sticks in your teeth. And the taste is too amazing.

Up until recently I was very limited to Dulce de Leche with my Häagen-Daz being the only ice cream I ever buy anymore besides my other standby- raspberry sorbet (try Ciao Bello!!!). This is exactly why I love blogging and looking at other food blogs-on Spike Bakes (also where I found my snickerdoodles and a fellow Mad Men fan which equals a wonderful person) I saw Dulce de Leche brownies. Intrigued, I began reading and was thinking "I'd love to try this but where am I going to find Dulce de Leche in a store around here?" (I've already looked). The recipe had come from pastry chef extraordinaire and foodie-David Lebovitz. I'm so jealous of food bloggers (or any bloggers, person, animal or plant) that gets to live in Paris. One day I'm sure that someone will pay me enough to go on assignment there for a few years or so.

But back to the great thing about blogging-on David's site I found out that making Dulce de Leche is easy. So easy, I couldn't believe I hadn't looked it up before. Here is how it happens. You take a can of sweetened condensed milk, add a fleck or two of salt, put it in a shallow dish, put the dish in a pan, pour hot water in the pan, bake for 1 hour.

That's it! I don't know why I thought it would be complicated. Well actually it can be more complicated since the traditional way to make it is to boil the can. Yes, you boil the entire can in a pressure cooker. I have no pot large enough for this task or I would probably be crazy enough to take it on. However, for my own life and that of my cat who could get hit if standing nearby by an exploding can, I'll stick to David's recipe for now.

So last night I tried it out. I nearly poured scalding water all over myself getting the pan in the 425 degree oven (*tip-pour water in after you sit the pan in the oven!!!). When I got it out, it looked very lumpy so I was wondering if I had left it in long enough but after putting it in another container and leaving it in the fridge overnight it came out perfectly. I've tried not to eat all of it so I can save it for some Dulce de Leche brownies also on David's blog.

Just in case, I have another can of sweetened condensed milk for backup. (By the time I posted this I have already used it up too...)


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