Recipe byThe ZestyPlate Kitchen
Homemade Argentine dulce de leche: milk and sugar slowly simmered into a thick, glossy caramel. Spread it, fill with it, or eat it straight.
Dulce de leche is what happens when you let milk and sugar cook down slowly until they turn thick, glossy and the colour of deep amber. It tastes intensely of caramel without any of the fuss of making caramel proper. Spread it on warm toast, fold it through puddings, or just dig in with a spoon and pretend you didn't.
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Prep 5 min
Cook 90 min
Total 95 min
Medium
Scale:
- 1 Litre Milk
- 300g Sugar
- 1/4 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Preparation
- Tip the milk, sugar and baking soda into a large, heavy-based pan and stir to combine. Set over low heat and stir constantly so nothing catches.
- Keep going, stirring often, until the mixture turns thick and a deep caramel brown. This usually takes one to two hours.
- Stir in the vanilla extract.
- Leave it to cool, then spoon into a jar; it carries on thickening as it cools.
- Throughout, hold the heat low and keep stirring so the milk doesn't burn, and save the vanilla for the very end so its flavour comes through.
Tips from the ZestyPlate Kitchen
- Reach for a heavy-based pan and a low flame so the milk doesn't catch and burn on the bottom.
- Stir often, and almost without pause towards the end, because it scorches the moment it starts to thicken.
- Pull it off the heat once it's a rich, deep brown; it firms up noticeably as it cools.
- A pinch of baking soda nudges it towards that classic dark, glossy colour.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can. Simmering an unopened tin of condensed milk for a couple of hours is the well-known shortcut, though keep it covered with water the whole time.
The sugar has crystallised, usually from too fierce a heat or not enough stirring. Keep the flame low and keep the spoon moving.
In a sealed jar in the fridge, a few weeks.
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