How to Make Dulce de Leche (Milk Caramel)

If you have never had Dulce de Leche (literally "milk candy"), then you have missed out on one of the simple yet great pleasures of life.  Surely there can be nothing sweeter, more pleasant, more deliciously divine than Dulche de Leche--and it's gluten-free, of course!  When I was young, we used to take cans of sweetened condensed milk and place them unopened in a pot of boiling water and boil them for a couple of hours.  Usually they came out good--but not always because we couldn't tell what was going on in the unopened can.  I've heard they can explode if you forget about them on the stove (dangerous!!).  Experience proves invaluable here, but now there's an easier way.

Just look at that!  The best Dulce de Leche--milk caramel--you will ever eat!

And what will you do with this Dulce de Leche once you have it, you ask?  That depends on how thick you decide to make it (see recipe below).  If you make it thinner, you can pour it on ice cream or other desserts.  If it's of medium thickness, you can spread it on gluten-free muffins or bread.  If it's thick, you can use it as a filling in gluten-free cupcakes or in other desserts that call for a thick filling.  Oh, who am I kidding?  You can just eat it out of the jar, too.  That's what I often do, lol!  It's like a wonderful, thick pudding.

 

What we're going to do is use a crock pot to heat the sweetened condensed milk in glass jars.  This makes it safer to make and easier to see what's going on.  Also, the final product is already saved in a jar.  You can't beat that for simplicity, so let's get started.

Here you see four 14-oz cans of store-brand sweetened condensed milk.  Pour the milk in clean mason jars.  Place a clean lid on and then a screw band.  I paid $1.99 per can and ended up with six half-pint jars, making each jar cost about $1.33--cheap for such a good final product!

Here the jars are nestled in the crock pot.  Then add hot water to cover the lids, cover the pot, and turn it on low.  In the second picture you can see the jars "cooking."

I wanted thick Dulce de Leche, so I left them in the crock pot for 9.5 hours.  Here they are already cooled down.  Of course, I couldn't resist opening one and testing it.  I had to make sure it wasn't poisoned before I gave it to my family, but somehow the contents of the jar disappeared, lol!  :)

4 14-oz jars of sweetened condensed milk

6 half-pint mason jars with lids and screw bands

Pour the contents of the sweetened condensed milk into the clean mason jars.  You'll need a silicone spatula to help you scrape it out of the cans.  What I did was pour each can into a separate clean jar, leaving about 3/4" of space at the top.  Those four jars were clean without drips so I set them aside.  Then I took what was left in each of the four cans and used the spatula to scrape it into the last two jars.  Yes--this can be sticky and messy, but the results are worth it.  Clean the two messy jars of drips using clean, wet paper towels.  Now place the lids on the jars, and then screw down the bands finger-tight (that is, don't use a vice grip).  Put the jars in a crock pot and pour hot tap water in just until it reaches above the jars.  Turn the crock pot on low.  Cook anywhere from 5 to 10 hours depending upon how thick and dark you want your Dulce de Leche.  The above picture shows jars that were cooked for 9.5 hours.  Remove the jars with a jar lifter (canning supplies) and set on a clean cloth to cool overnight.  Don't mess with the jars until they're completely cooled.

TIPS:  The bigger your crock pot, the more jars you can fit in.  Different jar manufacturers make differently shaped half-pint jars.  Some are fat and squat and some are taller and thinner.  You want to make sure that you can at least get the water up to just above the lids and still have about 1 inch of headroom in the crock pot.  I just made it in having enough room in mine!  Experiment with how you want your Dulce de Leche--thinner or thicker.  Remove two jars at five hours, two at seven hours, and two at nine or ten hours.  Then try them when they're cool and decide which you like best, depending on what you need it for.  If you want a pourable product, you may want to stop the cooking at five hours.  Experiment and have fun--no matter what you do, it will be delicious.  Dulce de Leche can be stored in the fridge for at least a couple of weeks.

 

NOTE:  I used clean, sterilized jars and lids and they did "ping" upon cooling, sealing in the contents with a vacuum seal.  You may use that knowledge at your own discretion.