Milk Jam, Cheesecake and a Bonus — Spanish Food 101

Heavenly Sweet

I never met a dulce de leche I didn’t like.  No.  That’s not entirely true.  I flew to Mexico for a brief business trip a few years ago not long after I reluctantly relocated back to the US from Argentina and upon my departure in the airport in Monterey I spotted a shelf with various sized jars of Cajeta — the Mexican version of Dulce de Leche.  I was eager to try it, especially since the sweet stuff was a staple in Argentina and I hadn’t had any in a couple of months.   I was missing the stuff they call milk jam.

This whole milk jam thing is confusing.  Before moving to Argentina I was given a day of cultural coaching.  My sister drove down to attend the session with me.  We had a good time.  It was great to discover information about the culture I was about to move to and we both learned a lot.  The trainer treated us to some Maté and Dulce de Leche.  Maté is not my cup of tea — literally.   To me it tastes like someone mowed the lawn and steeped it in hot water with a whole lot of sugar and I could just see the cows that might later be my dinner grazing on the stuff.  Ick!

The trainer told us Dulce de Leche, a staple in Argentina is also called Milk Jam, and that’s how I describe it to the uninitiated.  And here’s the funny thing … if you put milk jam in the Google language translator it comes up with Dulce de Leche.  If you reverse translate, Google can’t find a translation for Dulce de Leche.  And that’s about how my Berlitz Spanish immersion class went 8 hours a day for 15 long, arduous days.  I did not magically walk away speaking fluent Spanish.  ¿entiendes  Oh, and by the way, if you live in the US, they don’t speak the kind of Spanish you learned in high school.  No sir, they speak Castellano and please, the double LL’s are not silent!  That’s Castejano to you, buddy.  It’s a hard J.  And I like it that way.

See that, Google is looking for me to work for them … if I were to honor their request and submit a better translation this is what I’d say, Caramel.  No, not caramel.  An almost buttery sweet goodness to pour or depending on how thick you let it get, spread on bread, cookies, cakes, pancakes, cheesecake, steak, fruit … STEAK?!  Just kidding.  But yes, Argentines do exist on steak and dulce de leche.  If milk, sugar and cows were the only things left on the planet, Argentina would be just fine.

I need to amend that last statement.  If Milk, Sugar, Cows, a good supply of Malbec, and the Dancing Empanadas were the last thing on the planet, Argentina would rule.

I’d been dying to make mini cheesecakes, but the only thing I could come up with to make them in was my mini muffin pan.  It’s a non stick pan, but I sprayed it anyway and as you can see from the shots, these are not perfect little bites.  Because I needed to slide a knife around the sides the smooth edges, they were no longer smooth.

The taste is still amazing.   I had a container of strawberries calling out to me.  They were not the sweetest and didn’t have the most robust strawberry taste, but a spoonful of confectioner’s sugar and a spoonful of leftover simple syrup I made when I candied those kumquats and what we have here is a decadent strawberry pureé.

I had been making Dulce de Leche the David Lebovitz way, but yesterday I was in the mood to watch over a pot of milk and sugar for a few hours and this is the result using Rebecca’s recipe on her  From Argentina with Love blog.   I’ve used this recipe numerous times in the past and it’s always delicious.  It could probably have cooked another hour, but I was worried it would become too dark so I stopped at just over 2 hours.  The taste is devine.  Absolutely incredible although it came out more like Dulce de Leche Syrup rather than Milk Jam — still heavenly.  I like it better than the less labor intensive method using sweetened condensed milk, but you do have to be willing to stand around stirring and checking often.  I had a couple of incidents of milk and sugar boiling over the pot so I switched to a larger pot, but it happened again.  Not a big deal.  It’s just sugar and hot water takes care of it rather easily.

The crust is not what you think.  I haven’t used graham crackers for cheesecake crust since I began working at Williams-Sonoma and had my first Moravian Ginger Spice Cookie experience.  If you think you like gingerbread cookies, run, don’t walk to a Williams-Sonoma during the holidays and get your hands on a tin of these impossibly thin cookies.  They’re great to eat on their own, but crushing and then adding butter to them well, you’ve got the makings of the perfect Pumpkin Cheesecake crust.  Oh my!  Is it Thanksgiving yet?

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In 2007 my career with a large, but shrinking high tech Fortune 50 \"left me,\" leaving a void in my life. While lamenting the loss and flying around the world looking for a new career to get married to, I discovered a way to use a familiar outlet during tough times -- writing. My blog-writing morphed into writing about my favorite past time -- Food! I purchase food, sell food, make food, watch food being made, broadcast meal preparation, photograph and blog about food. Like I said; Food! To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the Dashboard -> Users -> Your Profile box.

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Tagged as: Cheesecake, Cook, Dessert, Dulce de Leche, Food, Strawberry