DULCHE DE LECHE

     This has been a long promised post of my dulche de lechay recipe. Well, actually not my recipe. Its a commonly found recipe, although there are a lot of ways to make this. The simplest I found was the microwave recipe. Again, I had to try to make and correct my recipe a lot of times since I was making it for the first time. I will try to post all the methods of making this, but I can vouch for the microwave one, it worked for me. But, in favour of the other methods, I can only say that I have collected them from reputed sources. I am kind of just summarising them up.

Starting with what is Dulche De Lechay, well I too was ignorant until a friend of mine asked me to make her a banoffie pie ( more on that later). So I got browsing and this is what I found.

 

 Dulce de leche  is a confection prepared by slowly heating sweetened milk to create a product that derives its taste from caramelised sugar.

FIRST METHOD: ( Foodnetwork.com)

Ingredients

• 1 quart whole milk
• 12 ounces sugar, approximately 1 1/2 cups
• 1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

Combine the milk, sugar, vanilla bean and seeds in a large, 4-quart saucepan and place over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved. Once the sugar has dissolved, add the baking soda and stir to combine. Reduce the heat to low and cook uncovered at a bare simmer. Stir occasionally, but do not re-incorporate the foam that appears on the top of the mixture. Continue to cook for 1 hour. Remove the vanilla bean after 1 hour and continue to cook until the mixture is a dark caramel color and has reduced to about 1 cup, approximately 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer. Store in the refrigerator in a sealed container for up to a month.

SECOND METHOD: (Stovetop method)

1 can

sweetened condensed milk

Remove the label from the can of condensed milk. Poke two vent holes in the top, by using a can opener for example. Put the can into a pot (with the holes up), and fill up the pot with water until it is a quarter inch or so below the top of the can. Put the pot on a stove and turn up the heat. Let the pot and can simmer gently for about one and a half to two hours for runny dulce de leche, or up to four hours for solid dulce de leche. Add more water, as necessary, when the level boils down too much.
When it's done, let it cool for a while, and then carefully open up the can completely. This is important because if the sontents are too hot you'll burn yourself.
The resulting product should be colored tan or brown.

THIRD METHOD: (Microwave method)
Again, this requires a can of condensed milk.  So, just open a can of condensed milk, pour it in a microwaveable glass bowl. The bowl should be a lot bigger than the amount of condensed milk used. during microwaving the condensed milk will start foaming and rising, if the bowl is small there will be spillage and a huge mess, and believe me you wouldn't like cleaning up that sticky mess. So, back to the method, microwave the contents of the jar for about 6-7 minutes or until the milk starts foaming. Take out the bowl, whisk the foaming milk and microwave again. Do this a few times, till the caramel thus formed starts leaving the sides of the bowl. this may take anywhere between 10-15 minutes depending upon your microwave. DURING THIS ENTIRE PROCESS HANDLE THE BOWL AND ITS CONTENTS CAREFULLY AS THEY ARE VERY HOT AND YOU MAY BURN YOURSELF. Add a few drops of vanilla and you are ready to go. I'll be putting up more recipes using this caramel later, or you could just sandwich some between some cookies (try my easy vanilla cookies) and you'll never be out of desserts.



There are a lot of other methods, but, hey, this works for me and its easy plus I'm feeling lazy, so I guess this'll do for us all. do try this and let me know how you like this.

NESTLE'S EGGLESS DATE CAKE

This was Nestle's latest recipe for Sweet Saturday. I so love these recipes. They are super easy to make and are eggless so perfect for vegetarians like me.  And this one especially is enriched with dates and curds, so perfect for tea with the family and surprise gifts for friends. PERFECT!!!

Preparation time: 20min
Cooking time: 40min.

Serves: 12

Ingredients:
NESTLÉ MILKMAID Sweetened Condensed Milk - ½ tin(200g)
NESTLÉ Milk - ½ cup (75 ml)
NESTLÉ Fresh ‘n’ Natural Dahi - ½ pack (100g)
Dates, chopped - 10-12 (100g)
Oil - ½ cup (75ml)
Maida - 1 cup (80g)
Baking Soda - 1 tsp
Walnuts, chopped - 2 tbsp,(25g)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, grease a 4x6 inch cake tin and dust with flour and keep aside. Boil the NESTLÉ Milk in a sauce pan, remove from heat and add the dates and cool.

2. Puree the dates in a blender, add the oil into the blender and process again until all the oil is incorporated and mixture becomes thick. Add the MILKMAID Sweetened Condensed Milk and NESTLÉ Dahi and blend well. Transfer the mixture into a bowl.

3. Sieve maida and baking soda well, fold the maida into the date mixture and sprinkle the chopped walnuts and mix well. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake in preheated oven for 25 –30 minutes or till toothpick inserted will come out clean. Cool for 5 minutes, remove the cake onto a serving dish. Slice and serve.

 

For those who would like to check out Nestle milkmaid sweet moments on Facebook here's the link

http://www.facebook.com/NestleMilkmaid

EGGLESS PINEAPPLE UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

I was browsing through my facebook page today. Among other pages that I look through on a regular basis is Nestle's Milkmaid Sweet Moments. They have such good recipes posted, especially eggless ones. Right now they are having "Cool Cake Saturdays" where they share cake recipes every saturday. The first recipe they posted today is this Pineapple upside down cake. My cake is in the oven as I write this post.  Hopefully it will turn out good, The usual eggless recipes that I make are not satisfactory, because the cake usually turn out dense. The texture of this cake as I was beating the mixture was quite light and frothy so hopefully, it will be alight cake.
             So, here's the recipe:

                     EGGLESS PINEAPPLE UPSIDE DOWN CAKE
Preparation time: 15 mins
Cooking time: 45 mins
Serves: 10

Ingredients:

NESTLE MILKMAID Sweetened Condensed Milk - 1 tin (400g)
Maida - 200 g
Butter - 100 g
Pineapple slices - 6
Baking powder - 1 tsp
Soda bicarbonate - 1 tsp
Aerated soda - 1 cup (150 ml)
Pineapple essence - ½ tsp
Sugar for caramelisation - 5-6 tbsp
Yellow colour (optional) - ½ tsp

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180° C. Grease an 8" diameter cake tin. Arrange the pineapple slices at the base. Heat sugar in a pan till it melts and becomes brown. Pour this hot caramel over the pineapple slices and keep aside.

2. Melt butter, cool slightly. Add the NESTLE MILKMAID and beat well, add the essence. Sieve together maida, baking powder and soda bicarbonate. Add some maida to MILKMAID mixture and then add some aerated soda and mix well. Repeat, alternatively maida and aerated soda till both are used up.

3. Pour batter over pineapple slices in the cake tin and bake at 180°C for 45 minutes or till cake is done. Remove from oven, loosen the sides of cake using a knife and immediately turn onto a plate.

     This cake doesn't need decorating at all. Although some dark red cherries contrasting with the uellow of the pineapple do look wonderful.  As for me I don't have any cherries now so I'll probably be decorating with some coloured gel or jam. I don't know I'll see when it comes to taking the cake out of the oven. 

 I'll be sharing more of milkmaid recipes as time passes, but for those who would like to check out Nestle's page, here's the link-    

http://www.facebook.com/NestleMilkmaid

THREE CHEERS FOR CONDENSED MILK

              I have rediscovered an old favourite. I remember my brothers and I fighting over licking the spoon whenever my mother made kheer. Yes! I'm meant condensed milk. I have always thought that condensed milk was good for kheer and coconut laddoos, but hey! you always learn new things. And my discovery was accidental. I am an avid fan of Masterchef Australia and Yes! I do record and watch each and every episode. So I have watched contestants making this caramel like thick paste out of condensed milk and I was kind of surprised, for it surprised me that condensed milk could be a sweet dish by itself, but then, a friend's daughter requested for a banoffie pie. I had never even heard of it and here I was attempting to make one.
              So, I did what I do when I need help. Opened up my laptop and started net surfing, and lo. behold, I discovered a beautiful thing. Banoffie pie and Dulche de leche.

               Dulce de leche is a sweet prepared by slowly heating sweetened milk to create a product that derives its taste from caramelised sugar. Literally translated, it means "candy of milk" or better "candy[made] of milk", "milk candy", or "milk jam".  Since I'm not sure whether I'll be able to get this in Delhi, I decided to make it. There are a lot of methods on the net for making this, and being impatient I decided to try the easiest one. Also the thought of boiling something on my stove for a minimum of 3-4 hours gave me shivers. Getting LPG cylinders is neither easy nor cheap plus it does take time and the can has a way of exploding if you are not careful, ( atleast that's what all the sites tell me). Anyways I tried the microwave method. It was easy and took about 15 minutes to get a great looking and great tasting caramel. In fact I made another batch immediately. I didn't know how much of this, I would be using for my pie. Coming to the Banoffie pie, it's basically a very simple thing as far I understand - a biscuit or shortbread base, a layer of dulche de leche, a layer of bananas and then a layer of whipped cream. So, tomorrow, I'm gonna try making one. Hopefully it will be good. Fingers crossed. If this works out I'm certainly going to put up the entire recipe and photos up here.