Just in case you missed this article on making your own dulce de leche the first time we shared it a couple of years ago, we are republishing it. After Sharon wrote this blog originally, we got an awesome response. This is one of the PYP Best Blogs!

I made a discovery of epic proportions this weekend!  Dramatic?  Maybe a bit, but if you – like I – didn’t know this before, I think you’ll be happy I shared!

My boys found a recipe they were dying to try, but it called for Dulce de Leche.  Whether that is available in my store or not, I don’t know, I never looked.  Since I had cans and cans of sweetened condensed milk in my pantry and knew you could use it to make dulce de leche, I wasn’t going to spend the extra money.  The internet is full of “recipes” about how you can boil a closed can of sweetened condensed milk either in a pan or in your crock pot for hours until it turns into thick, gooey, carmely goodness.

The internet is also full of stories about said cans exploding as they heat and making a thick, gooey carmely mess in your kitchen and potentially harming anyone nearby.

I will admit that I tried it once; it works, but I was nervous the whole time, so even though I knew I could do it again, I kept putting it off.  Finally, I searched the internet to see if there was another option.  I found one blogger who said that you can pour the milk into the top of a double boiler and stir it over heat for 2 1/2 hours as it cooks.  No thanks; keep searching…

BINGO!

You can cook it in the oven!!!

Turn your oven on to 425*.  Open the sweetened condensed milk and pour it into an oven safe glass pan…a pie plate is perfect for one can.  I used a bigger pyrex pan here because the recipe I’m making required 2 cans worth of the finished product.

Cover this tightly with aluminum foil.

Put the glass pan into a bigger pan – like a roaster pan – and fill with hot water up to about halfway up the sides of the glass pan.

Pop the whole thing in the oven and leave it to cook for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  Check it once in awhile to make sure that there is plenty of water and replenish when necessary.

After about an hour, pull back the corner of the foil and have a look.  When it’s done it should be thick and brown.  (With the 2 cans that I did, it took more like 2-and-a-bit hours, but the one can was perfect after about an hour and 15 minutes).

**BE VERY CAREFUL when you open the oven door.  Open it and stand back or you will get hit in the face with very hot steam!!

Once it is dark and carmely looking, remove the pan from the water and whip it with a whisk or a fork until it is smooth.

Now just try not to eat it all with a spoon…