Homemade Dulce de Leche Recipe - Oh Sweet Basil (2024)

FAQs

What does baking soda do to dulce de leche? ›

You can make dulce de leche by cooking down milk and sugar in the stove top, with the addition of baking soda to help the reactions that occur in order to form a thick and rich dulce de leche. The results: A dark sauce, slightly gritty, thick but not pipeable.

Caramel and dulce de leche might look and taste somewhat similar, but they are actually pretty different. While caramel is made from slowly simmering water and sugar until it caramelizes, dulce de leche is made from simmering milk and sugar super slowly until it turns into a creamy, caramelized substance.

What you make out of condensed milk is dulce de leche. It's often called caramel or toffee, but it's not really either. The recipe is trivial: pour the condensed milk in a pan. Heat it over low heat, stirring continuously, until it turns into dulce de leche.

Technically, if you see dulce de leche in a recipe, you can instead use caramel, and vice-versa. However, there will be a slight variance in taste and texture, and the recipe will no longer be authentic to the specified region. That is why we always recommend differentiating between dulce de leche and caramel.

Baking Soda will make the Milk thick and give creamy texture. Condensed Milk is ready. It is thick and creamy. Cool down to room temperature.

Because the filling depends on the acid from the citrus juice essentially jelling the sweetened condensed milk, it may be a little softer set if you use orange juice, which tends to be a little less acidic. You can help that by adding in a bit of lemon juice with the orange to raise the acidity.

Pro Tips for this recipe

Your dulce de leche will last about two weeks in the fridge if kept in a sealed container or three months if left in the unopened can. If you're employing the boiling method it's better to use the cans that do not have tab openers although I have not had an issue with them personally.

Don't overcook

Overcooking Dulce de Leche will make it too thick and maybe even taste burnt. To avoid overcooking, do a cold plate test. You simply dab a small amount of the caramel on a cold plate and turn it sideways. See how far the caramel runs.

Thickness: in order to obtain a really thick dulce de leche, you have to bake it for a really long time. However, the longer you bake it, the more scorched it gets. Frosting use: if the dulce de leche is too lumpy it won't work well for frosting.

Butterscotch is made from cooking down brown sugar with butter, and its flavor is sweeter and softer than that of caramel. Dulce de leche is made from slowly cooking cow milk and sugar together. Dulce de leche made with goat milk is known as cajeta.

Can you use sweetened condensed milk instead of dulce de leche? ›

Dulce de leche is basically sweetened condensed milk that has continued cooking until the sugars have caramel used. You can make SCM into DdL by boiling the unopened can of SCM for a couple of hours.

According to the tale, one of Rosas' maids was distracted and left a pan of milk and sugar on the hob. It overcooked, and the mixture turned into a caramelized cream. And so Rosas' forgetful maid was immortalized in Argentinian gastronomic history as the inventor of dulce de leche.

Is it safe to boil my can of sweetened condensed milk to make caramel sauce? No. For safety reasons, we do not recommend heating a can of our condensed milk, opened or unopened. The current can is not designed to withstand high temperatures.

Caramel is made primarily of sugar with some butter and cream added at the end. Dulce de leche is milk with some sugar added. Both are caramelized but the ingredient proportion and flavor are quite different.

The results are delicious every single time. Sweetened condensed milk is the perfect base for making a wet caramel. It is basically milk that has had more than half of its water content removed before being sweetened and packed in cans. It is thick, rich, and shelf-stable.