Home-made Condensed Milk

Condensed milk has always been a favourite since childhood. This creamy, thick, gooey milk is loved by children and a lot of bakers use this for making buttercream icings, flavoured whipped cream, cheese cakes, mousses, cake flavours, ice creams etc. The possibilities are endless..

Lets talk about the store bought condensed milk tins. Sure they are tasty. But a lot of preservatives go in them, which are harmful for health. Besides, they are super expensive as well, which not every person would like to spend on.

So, I thought, why not try to make a home made version and lets see how its made and how would it taste. There are a lot of recipes floating on the internet with a lot of ingredients. I always try and make things less complicated and easily available and quick to prepare. So my recipe calls for just three ingredients, easily available in your pantry and you could make Condensed Milk any time at home. Its fairly simple but does need your attention for a rich final product.

Use this to make your eggless cakes, I will be posting the best ever eggless vanilla cake recipe soon on my blog, which uses my home made condensed milk. You will love the taste, the softness it brings and the crumbly melt in your mouth feel.

So lets get cooking..


Ingredients

• Milk - 500 Ml
• Sugar - 3/4 cup
• Soda bi carb - 1/4 Tsp

Method 

Take a heavy bottom pan and boil the milk. Once it starts to bubble, add the sugar and stir constantly, so that the bottom of the pan does not burn.

Boil this mix for about 10-15 mins on low - medium flame. Reduce the milk to quarter of its quantity.

You will notice a light yellow tinge in the milk, as the sugar here starts to caramelize. This is the color we are looking for.

After it has reduced to quarter its volume, turn the flame on low and add cooking/baking soda stirring continuously .

This milk and sugar mix will double in volume and will start to boil out, so let the gas be on low flame, stirring continuously.

Let this simmer for a few minutes. And then turn off the flame.

Now, this milk will have thickened and it should coat your spoon or the mixture should be forming ribbons in your bowl...That's how, you can check the consistency of your sweetened condensed milk.

Let the Condensed Milk cool...

If you feel you mix doesn't look like the store bought one's yet and needs to be more thick , you can always re- cook this and thicken it as per your taste.


A Few Tips

• You can use whole milk. I used regular milk.

• This Condensed milk can be refrigerated for upto a week.

• Use this for eggless cakes (Egg Substitute). This condensed milk makes the most soft, crumbly and moist cakes. (I will be posting a few recipes soon)

• This is also used in making a lot of desserts, ice creams- as base and sweets like chewy coconut ladoos. 

• Kids love this with chapatis. Just spread this on a chapati and roll it and cut it into two pieces and pack it for their lunch... 

• You can make your own ''Dulce De Leche'' . Just cook this condensed milk until it turns a deep brown color. This is nothing but your toffee sauce.  Used in chocolates as fillings, cookies, cakes, toppings for waffles and ice creams etc.

Do try this and leave me a comment!