Dulce de Leche

As you can see from the last few recipes I've posted, I've been eating pretty healthily. However, I've always been a firm believer in balance ie. I think that eating well gives us the excuse to utterly spoil ourselves with oh so decadent desserts that aren't even remotely good for us. For all the caramel fans out there, this one's for you. Smooth, rich and crazy delicious this simple one ingredient recipe requires just a little skill and a bit of time. Although served all over the place under different names and brought to different degrees of caramelization, dulce de leche is most commonly associated with South America, particularly Argentina. So if you're somewhere cold (like me!), here's an excuse to make up some nice, rich caramel and dream of sunshine, beaches and good food.

Time: One to two hours

Ingredients:
-Condensed milk (big can, small can, industrial sized can, whatever you choose it just affects cooking time)

To make dulce de leche, basically all you're doing is evaporating the water from condensed milk while caramelizing the sugar so all you need to do is...

1) Preheat oven to 425
2) Prepare a water bath, I used a large oven proof casserole dish with a smaller one inside, fill the big one with water until the water is halfway to three quarters up the sides of the smaller dish
3) Pour the condensed milk into the smaller dish, cover tightly with aluminium foil
4) Put your water bath and milk in the oven and bake, taking it out every 30 minutes or so to lift the aluminium foil (watch out for steam!!!) and keep the water levels up in the water bath
5) The 1-2 hour time is an estimate, take it out when it reaches a consistency you like, give it a good stir before bottling.
6) Serve poured onto fruit, nuts or rolled into a crepe (if you're feeling extra risky you can even combine it all and fill the crepe with fruits and nuts *gasp!*). You can also eat it on toast! It's like nutella except it doesn't even pretend to have health benefits *cough *cough* 

So far I've stored my dulce de leche in the fridge for 2 weeks, it's still goin' strong!