I did a bad, bad thing.
At a time when everyone, myself included, is trying to detox and eat healthy, I made one of the most ridiculously indulgent, unhealthy treats known to man.
Of course, it wasn’t my fault. I blame the milkman. You see, every year at Xmas he asks for our ‘holiday’ order and I oblige, writing in the number of bottles we need on each delivery day. This year we have a new milkman who apparently can’t read my handwriting. Or is dyslexic. Either way, he got the order completely messed up and we ended up with 10 pint bottles of milk at once.
Our fridge is of European proportions, meanging TINY. 10 bottles won’t fit. I tried leaving some outside but they went ‘off’, so I realized I had to do something with all this milk. I made yogurt, of course, but still had plenty leftover. That’s when my mind turned to evil thoughts.
Dulce de leche – pronounced doolsay day laychay and meaning ‘milk candy’ in Spanish – is something I’ve enjoyed before but never made. I knew the easy way of making it, the cheat’s method, was to boil a tin of condensed milk for a few hours. But that wouldn’t help use up my stockpile of milk, which was the original goal here, right? So I started recipe hunting.
The immediate problem I ran into is that, although you can of course make dulce de leche from milk, all of the recipes I found use whole milk. This is because lowfat (2% or less) milk has too few milk solids in it and would boil away to nothing. And 2% milk is what I had. It wasn’t looking good. But then I remembered, with a crook of my eyebrow, that I had some double cream (also called heavy or whipping cream) left over from Christmas. Surely that would fill in the missing blanks, as it were? Mwuaaaahahahaha…
Before my conscience had a chance to stop me, I jumped right in. And it wasn’t pretty, at least not in the cooking stages.
After one hour (left) and after four hours (right)
And it took a very long time. Probably because of the relatively low fat content. I stopped after four hours and let it be a little thinner than dulce de leche normally is, but I wanted it to be pourable. I reasoned that I could always boil it again if I wanted to thicken it, but you can’t un-boil it if it becomes too thick.
Some of you may be wondering what I was planning to do with all of this liquid toffee sin? Well I didn’t really have a clue. Vague visions of pouring it over vanilla ice cream, apple cake, bread pudding and banana trifle were all ushered out the window when I remembered I was due to be starting a low-carb diet this month. I also didn’t really want to be feeding all of those sweets to my kids. But a glance at the fruit bowl gave me the answer. I poured a cup of dulce de leche, surrounded it with sliced green and red apples, pears and bananas and hey presto – made my daughter’s day!
My kids have now had this treat a few times, I’ve given some away and I still have half a jarful in the fridge. I’m going to make ice cream with it, just because at least then it’ll be a bit further out of sight. Having it be the first thing I see when I open the fridge door is making January dieting a total nightmare!
| How to Make Dulce de Leche from Low-Fat Milk |
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From:
Yields approx. 1 litre or 4 cups (1 quart)
What You Need
- 3 pints (6 cups or 1 1/2 quarts) low-fat milk
- 600 ml (2 1/2 cups) double cream
- 500g (2 1/2 cups) Demerara sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
What You Do
- Put everything in a large pot and gently bring to a boil, stirring constantly.
- Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 4 hours, stirring frequently.
- When it’s almost as thick as you want it (remember it will thicken as it cools), remove from the heat and pour through a fine sieve into sterilised jars.
- Keep refrigerated and use within a few weeks.
Notes for Next Time
1. Using low-fat milk does NOT make this low-fat dulce de leche, because of the double cream obviously. But it sure sounds nice, doesn’t it?
2. I went easy on the sugar and the result is a bit less sweet than you may have had before. It was still plenty sweet for us and I liked that the milky taste was able to come through.
3. Some (most) recipes call for vanilla – I left it out because I wanted a more pure flavour, and the Demerara sugar I used has a nice tone to it, that I didn’t want to be overpowered. I’m going to stand by my decision. The pinch of salt I added could be upped if you wanted more of a salted toffee taste, but I’d prefer to add the salt/vanilla/cinnamon/peppermint – whatever you can think of – when you use it, thereby keeping most of the batch ‘neutral’ so it can have multiple applications.
4. My goal in making this was to use up excess 2% milk, which is why I had to add the heavy cream. If you’re going to buy the milk just for this recipe, then buy whole milk (about 4 pints or 2 quarts) and leave the cream out. Much simpler!
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16 Responses to How to Make Dulce de Leche from Low-Fat Milk
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The most delicious treat
It is all gone in my house! 11 out of 10! X
Wow – that was fast Nina! Glad you all liked it!
It looks so perfectly delish I would have had a hard time giving any away. Bravo for finding a way to make it with low fat milk. Creativity and a sweet tooth can be a deadly combo
Ha, Lora, you of all people would know about that combo! Sadly, as mentioned in the notes above, this did not result in low-fat dulce de leche. Still, it has a bit less sugar than most and it may just have a touch less fat. We have to cling to those little triumphs with sweet treats, don’t we?
What a great post!! Thanks!!
Brilliant way to use up that excess milk! And what a treat indeed…perfect for dunking fruit especially if it a bit thinner
Lovely, hugs
Sounds so yummy!! What is “double cream”? Is there a % to it? I’ve never seen it in the grocery store (canada).
can’t wait to start dipping!!
Thank you
Excellent question Beatriz, sorry I didn’t ‘translate’ that in the post! Double cream in the UK has a minimum of 48% fat. It would be called heavy cream or whipping cream in the US (and probably Canada). Since the aim in this recipe to replace the fat that isn’t in the 2% milk, I think any cream with over 35% fat would work.
First, your daughter is too cute for words! I love your photos as well. They are so crisp and clear.
The dulce de leche [DOOL-seh deh LEH-cheh] looks amazing. I love the photo of the spilled sweetness pooling around the spoon. YUM!
Thanks Memoria! Thanks, too, for the correction on the pronunciation guidance. I do know how to say it, I just couldn’t quite figure out how to write it phonetically. You did a better job.
here you go another phonetic version – dool say day letch ay…LOL love this stuff….
I have seen dulce de leche made with condensed milk on many blogs but I am not sure if I’ve ever tasted it. Maybe I should just leave it at that as the prolonged festivities have not been good for my waistline. It looks good though with those fruits.
Your daughter’s a cutie!
How very resourceful of you, love it! It may not be great for the diet but sure is great on everything you can imagine, lol. I make mine with half-whole milk and half goat milk. That is how it is made in my Mexican hometown. Anyways, your idea of dipping it with fruit is a scrumptious one.
I have got to make this soon! I actually woke up this morning thinking of this yumminess that we dipped our apples in a couple of weeks ago.
Please let me know when you start a catering company?!
Ha – won’t be anytime soon Sally! But you’re always welcome to come over and taste test when you’re in town.
Ruby, this is soo good! I am a huge fan of dulche de leche, I made it once from whole milk and several times from condensed milk (I just cooked unopened can). This is another great way to do it.
I tend to pig out on this and eat it with a spoon straight from the jar, without anything else. Cannot resist it