Heres a great thing to do when you’ve got a lot of milk and an hour or two to spare. Make your own Dulce De Leche. The real stuff, which is just whole milk and sugar (and a little cream of tartar), cooked down into a gooey caramel, hinted with just a little cinnamon.
YUM. This stuff is so much better than just boiling a tin of sweetened condensed milk for a couple of hours. It’s far less sweet, and much more seductive in the mouth.
And assuming you don’t eat it all off the spoon, you can put it into cinnamonny cupcakes, so it oozes out of the centre of the soft cake and blends with crunchy cinnamon sugar.
I’ve made these quite a few times now and I have to say, I can’t decide what time of day its best to eat them. They’re great with coffee, and they’re simple enough to have for breakfast.
Or… you can heat them up and have them with liquid cream for dessert.
Dulce de Leche Cupcakes
Makes 12
ingredients
130g butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plain unsweetened yogurt
1/2 cup dulce de leche (recipe follows)
1/4 cup cinnamon sugar (made by mixing 1 tbsp cinnamon with 1/4 cup sugar)
mixing
Line a 12 hole muffin pan with cupcake cases and spray them with non- stick spray.
Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, followed by the cinnamon and vanilla. Sift the flour and baking powder and add to the mixture with the milk and yogurt. Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases.
Load the dulce de leche into a piping bag fitted with a 5cm round nozzle. Pipe approximately 2 teaspoons (10mL) of dulce de leche into the centre of each cupcake, by inserting the nozzle about 1cm deep into the batter and squeezing gently until you see the cupcake batter start to expand. Sprinkle with 1 tsp of cinnamon sugar.
Bake the cupcakes at 175 degrees celsius for 25 minutes or until they are golden brown. Some of the dulce de leche may be bubbling up from the inside of the cupcakes by now!
Dulce de Leche
makes about 325mL
ingredients
1 litre milk
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp vanilla essence
a little salt to taste
mixing
Combine the milk, sugar, baking soda and cinnamon stick in a deep, heavy based saucepan. Cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture is boiling and foaming. Continue to stir until the mixture stops foaming. Reduce the heat, so that the mixture is just simmering. You might need to adjust this from time to time as the mixture starts to colour up and eventually thicken.
Continue to cook for about 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally (every 10 minutes or so) to prevent any sticking. The mixture will very gradually turn a caramel colour, and at the end of the cooking phase, will thicken until a spoon scraped across the bottom of the saucepan will leave a momentary track in the mixture where you can see the bottom of the saucepan. You will need to stir the mixture constantly when the mixture starts to thicken. Once you reach this point, remove from the heat and pour into a hot, sterilised jar.
The dulce de leche keeps for a week or so at room temperature, but if the weather is hot it is best to keep it in the fridge.
Enjoy!xxx
