dulce de leche para perezosos

Everyone likes dulce de leche, but who has time to stand over a hot stove stirring milk and sugar for hours? The lazy man's way to make it is by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk in a pot of water for a few hours. With a can, there is no need to stay in the kitchen, although you should check on the pot occasionally to make sure that the water level stays higher than the top of the can.

I read one account in which the can of condensed milk exploded, but that person forgot to refill the water and let their pot boil dry. Although your can should not explote if you keep the water level above the top of the can, you should still be aware of the risk of explosion and treat the boiling can with appropriate caution (whetever that may be). The longer you boil, the more solid the resulting product will be. We found that boiling for 2 hours resulted in a nice think, spreadable texture. It thickened further once it cooled. If you plan to use the dulce de leche as a dip or toppoing, you should boil for closer to 1 1/2 hours.

There are those who say that boiled condensed milk is not true dulce de leche. Ignore them. It tastes great and is much easier (not to mention cheaper) than the traditional way of making it. I recommend spreading your dulce de leche over shortbread cookies:




Even Mrs. Essenessen, who usually does not like shortbread, agreed that this was an excellent way to eat the contents of the can.

Through some mysterious chemical process, boiling the can coated the interior of my stainless steel pot with a dark metallic coating. The same thing happened when I steamed a can in the pot for Boston Brown Bread, so it is clearly caused by the metal in the can. If it happens to you, don't worry - the layer does come off with agressive scrubbing.

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You call that salt?

Regular readers will remember my post about fleur de sel caramels, in which I said that there does not seem to be much difference between fleur de sel and other sea salts. A recent post by David Lebowitz disagrees, and explains why your life is not worth living unless you are using real fleur de sel from France. I have done a taste test and honestly cannot tell much of a difference between th eFrench salt and other sea salts. There is a defference between sea salt and regular table salt, but it may be due to the shape of the salt. A future experiment will involve comparing ground sea salt to table salt.

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Ostereier

This is a very belated post about Easter eggs. We created the textured appearance of the left and middle eggs on the top row by wrapping them in cheesecloth while dying them. The designs on the bottom row were created by wrapping the eggs in rubber bands. The irish flag egg was made the traditional way, by holding the egg partly out of the water while dying it.

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Rhubarb muffins

There are not many fresh vegetables in the farmer's market here this early in the growing season, but there is plenty of rhubard. We made a tasty rhubarb recipe from The Rhubarb Compendium. The muffins turned out very well and were nice and tart, but nothing compares to rhubarb pie.

Ingredients:
1/4 c. salad oil
1 c. milk
½ tsp. vanilla
1 egg
2 ½ c. Flour
2/3 c. sugar
1 T. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
2 c. thinly sliced rhubarb

Procedure:
Mix on low speed the oil, milk, vanilla and eggs. Add all at once all remaining ingredients except rhubarb, mixing on low speed. Fold in rhubarb. Fill muffin tins 3/4 full, and sprinkle each top with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake at 375F for 17-23 minutes

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Braaaiiiiiinnnnnsss

Back in North Carolina, the country stores sometimes carried canned pork brains, but I haven't seen them here. So when I looked out my window last Saturday and saw 150 blood-stained zombies shambling down the street demanding brains, I did not invite them in for tea. The zombies were dogged by a small but dedicated group of anti-zombie protesters.

I later learned that the zombie march was organized by a group called halfwaytohuman. They have links to video and pictures, but the video doesn't do justice to the spectacle of that many zombies. They were also more impressive in real life than in the video because I couldn't hear them laughing - just moaning and demanding brains.

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