The shawl if off the needles but instead of blocking I have spent the day scrubbing shelves and walls in the basement. This is the kids area overlowing with stuffed toys, blocks, legoes etc in addition to housing our main Television and DVD collection. Oh and the computers. Really very filthy. Since there is no knit fodder I turn to cooking fodder. Dessert fodder.

Last Friday I made Doce de Leite or Dulce de Leite depending on where you are from. Doce de Leite is a childhood sweet that seems to have become popular in the United States recently. Or at least popular enough that Burger King is offering Dulce de Leite cheesecake and jello pudding offers Dulce de Leite flaver. Neither of these commercial offerings compare to my childhood memories. First off lets talk about texture~ Doce de Leite was most often served as a curdy mix kinda like a very soft tapioca pudding. Sometimes it was a smooth creamy mix similar to a thin butterscotch or caramel ice cream topping. Now I happen to have a cookbook called Brazil by Christopher Idone. I don’t recommend this book at all. The Piccadillo is all wrong as is the Farofa and the Black Beans that are the main ingredient of Fejoida. At least my mother would never cook beans with pigs feet and beef tongues and other icky lesser cuts of meat and her farofinha was more than sauteed in oil meal. Let me assure you that the recipe for Piccadillo aka Pinky Dinky I shared earlier is not made with steak or seasoned with mace and other ‘sweet’ spices. As I said All Wrong. Still in the back was tucked a recipe for Doce De Leite and the ingredients looked right even if a bit sparse. Here are the instructions per the book: 4 c Milk and 2 c Sugar put in a copper pot and over a boiling water bath. Stir 10 mins to dissolve sugar and cook, stirring occassionally, for an hour and half. Stir constantly for an additional half hour.

Where should I begin? Well I don’t own a copper pot and wasn’t about to drop a couple hundred just to make dessert. Nor do I own a double broiler so I turned to my handy dandy crockpot thinking constant steady heat with heavy ceramic bowl to prevent scorching or whatever. 2 hrs later I still had what I had put in~ sugar milk. Turned up the heat and waited another 2 hrs and still sugar milk. Took off the lid thinking maybe the whole liqued preservation factor was hindering my curdling and browning of milk and no go. Sugar milk. I decided patience had to be a virtue in something and waited another 2 hrs. Cream colored sugar milk-no longer milky white but a bit off white. Time to call the mommy.

Here is her correct recipe:

2 parts WHOLE MILK to 1 part sugar. You MUST use whole milk. Luckily I was. Place the ingredients in a heavy saucepan if you have one otherwise any regular pot would do. Bring ingredients to boil. Turn down heat to bare simmer and stir occasionally for 2 hrs. It should be a camel colored mix and have reduced significantly. If you want the curdy mixture which is more American in sensibility[Americans tend to look at the non curdy mix as a topping ~ its a thick creamed soup consistency] then add a ‘few drops’ of lemon juice just when the mix has come to a boil. Not enough to make the milk sour but enough to start the milk solids seperation from water reaction. Also flavor with a cinnomon stick or a few cloves. My mum used to season with both together and thats what I did. Much better than the sugar milk flavor I was dealing with before. Also another optional thing is to add whipped til stiff egg whites after the milk mix has boiled and the heat has been reduced. Depending on how much milk how many egg whites. Since I had no plans to add egg whites I didn’t inquire further and I really don’t recall my mum doing this part as a child but she said thats what some people do in Brazil. I had a nice camel colored coats the spoon mix within 2 hrs~ more like an hour and half and covered and placed in fridge where it thickened up a bit more. The lemon juice didn’t work for me probably because it had already changed from milk white to off white by time I got it on the stove. Try it you might like it. And I assure you the milk content makes it more healthful than any commercial butterscotch or caramel topping you can purchase. Of course you could just scoop some into a bowl and serve with a spoon. We ate it both ways over here this weekend and yummsters. After my waistline recovers a bit I will remake it aiming for curdy goodness.