Monday, January 4, 2010

I Love You Alice B Toklas - Divine Dulce





















“The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook” would probably not be well known to most blog readers, however, much can be found online about Alice B. Toklas, her life and times with Gertrude Stein and others, and her cookbook.

On page 259 is the infamous recipe for Haschich Fudge (which anyone could whip up on a rainy day), that inspired the title for the film starring Peter Sellers “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas”. The instructions point out that “obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulties.....”, but that “two pieces (of the fudge) are quite sufficient.”

It also has 2 versions of Dulce. Neither recipe really gives the most wonderful explanation for how to prepare dulce de leche. You can find the recipes from the book with instructions for the dulce by searching in the Amazon link.

Despite not being thorough in the explanations and testing, there are many interesting recipes and anecdotes including the time she prepared sea bass for Pablo Picasso.

It has loads of great ideas and thinking about the life of Alice B. Toklas makes you sit back and dream of yesteryear.

There are many recipes now for dulce de leche made with cans of sweetened condensed milk heated either on the stove or in the oven. The Thermomix makes light work of making the dulce from milk, cream, sugar and bicarb soda – and it odes the stirring that Alice said needed to be continuous.

There have been problems with the mixture bubbling over like Mt Vesuvius, but if the speed is kept at Speed 5, then the foam will not form. I made a little video to show that when the speed drops from 5 to 3, the mixture starts to bubble through the opening in the lid. But turning the speed back up to 5 eliminates the foam and allows the dulce to happily develop over 45 minutes.

Unfortunately there were problems embedding the video, so if you click on the thumbnail you can see that video (if you need to)

Dulce de Leche


After about 15 minutes of mixing the liquid resembles sweetened condensed milk and I took some out to make a tiramisù ice cream.

Once it was finished the mixture was thick and caramelly and deliciously sweet.

The recipe below is based on one from Amanda in Spain.






Thermomix Dulce de Leche

Ingredients:


1 litre milk
220g sugar
100g cream
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda

Method:

Place ingredients into TM bowl and cook for 45 minutes on Varoma temperature at Speed 5. Place basket on lid with an open-weave cloth to allow it to evaporate without spraying mxiture all over the room.

When finished, quickly pour into jar and leave it to cool. When it cools it will be nice and thick. Keep in the fridge

5 comments:

  1. thankyou thankyou thankyou - love this recipe. just made thermomix chocolate macarons & filled them with this dulce de leche

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  2. Made this today (although just put it in the TMX, didn't use the slow cooker). It worked fantastically, and is stupendously delicious, but I'll add a warning that it will also boil over with Mt Vesuvius like effect at speed 4. As I discovered. Ooops. Fortunately Thermie survived to fight another day.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. True, it will boil over if the speed gets below 5. The video doesn't show it properly, but it makes a mess.

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