{"id":651,"date":"2013-04-25T13:37:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T17:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev6.finelimedesigns.com\/2013\/04\/25\/battle-of-the-store-bought-dulce-de-leches\/"},"modified":"2023-07-18T14:34:44","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T18:34:44","slug":"battle-of-the-store-bought-dulce-de-leches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/battle-of-the-store-bought-dulce-de-leches\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparison of store-bought dulce de leche"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Find out the best store-bought dulce de leche in this comparison of three brands from the grocery store.<\/p>\n\n\n[feast_advanced_jump_to]\n\n\n

What it is<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dulce de leche is a sweet, caramelized milk spread that is very common in Latin America. It's also called milk jam. You can smear it on toast, especially brioche<\/a>, or you can use it as a filling for cakes and cookies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How it's different than caramel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dulce de leche and salted caramel sauce<\/a> are not the same thing. With dulce de leche, milk and sugar (or sweetened condensed milk) are cooked to make a thick, spreadable caramelized milk jam. On the other hand, for caramel sauce, the sugar is cooked alone, sometimes with water and corn syrup or glucose to prevent crystallization<\/a>. The dairy (cream and\/or butter) is added after sugar caramelization occurs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caramel has a deeper flavour coming from the burnt sugar notes from the different cooking process. Some love it and some hate it for that reason. Though the processes can seem quite similar, the flavour and outcome of making dulce de leche versus caramel are quite different. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that you can further cook caramel sauce to make a thicker filling or soft caramels<\/a>, and it's likely that you could do the same with dulce de leche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Three<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ways of making it from scratch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are several ways of making dulce de leche at home. Some start with cans of sweetened condensed milk, others start from milk and sugar. It's a delicate process to caramelize sweet milk and it takes time. The goal is to darken the colour of the milk to a deep mahogany, while also caramelizing the sugars and milk solids, developing the flavour, and thickening the mixture to a spreadable, thick consistency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether you start with cans of sweetened condensed milk or a combination of milk and sugar, all of these methods work fine. But some require constant stirring and all of them take at least an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Three<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Comparing store-bought dulce de leches<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You might not have a couple of hours to make dulce de leche, and that's okay! I compared three brands of dulce de leche that were available at my local supermarket to find the best:<\/p>\n\n\n\n