Goat-Milk Caramel (Cajeta)

This has a lovely taste, and is definitely different than the normal dulce de leche that I make the South American way by simmering a can of condensed milk for several hours. It is definitely more time consuming, and took about an hour of standing and stirring, all told.

Be careful not to over-reduce it, however. I did the first time I made this and ended up with a very thick caramel once I'd refrigerated it. Still tasted amazing - with a creamy note that's hard to describe - but it was too thick to use in the warm cajeta pudding in the book. I'll be mixing it into ice cream when I make a batch this weekend, so it won't go to waste!

Remember that it will thicken more when it cools, so pull it off the heat before it gets to the point where you can see the bottom of the pan for a few moments after stirring it - in my case the color was still not very dark but the cajeta was already a little too thick.

Sweet, creamy, caramel goodness with a hint of cinnamon.

I used full fat (3.25%) goat’s milk for this recipe and added vanilla bean seeds and the pod at the start along with the cinnamon stick as I had decided not to flavour it with alcohol. Make sure your pot is large enough to handle twice the volume of milk and then some because that’s how much it foamed when I added the baking soda.

For the first 25 minutes of cooking “it took 35 for mine“ not much seemed to happen and only occasional stirring was required. But once it became a "pale gold syrup”, full attention was required. When the instructions say to stir the mixture very frequently, it means constantly, otherwise you’ll end up with a scorched mess. The finished consistency is as the author describes, like thin corn syrup.

I’ve made cajeta before using a different recipe and cow’s milk and though the other was less sweet, which is my preference, this one is far more complex and has the subtle but distinctive flavour of goat’s milk.