Brazilian · Dessert
Pudim de Leite Condensado
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 200 g caster sugar, for the caramel
- 60 ml water
- 1 tin (395 g) sweetened condensed milk
- 395 ml whole milk, measured in the empty tin
- 3 large eggs
- 1 large egg yolk
- 2 g fine salt
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Sugar stages & caramelStraining & passing through a sieve
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cook the sugar and water in a small pan without stirring until it is the colour of an old copper coin and smells faintly bitter, then pour it into a 20 cm ring tin and tilt to coat the base.
- Blend the condensed milk, milk, eggs, yolk and salt for 30 seconds only, pour through a fine sieve into a jug, and let it stand until the foam has thinned to a rim of bubbles.
- Pour into the caramelled tin, stand it in a roasting tray, and pour boiling water into the tray to come halfway up the outside of the tin.
- Bake at 160C (325F) for 60 minutes to 70 minutes, until the edge is set and the centre moves in one piece, like a shrug, when you nudge the tray. 60 min
- Cool, then chill at least 6 hours before running a knife round the edges and inverting onto a lipped plate. 360 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes
- Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
- Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
- It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
- The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
- The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.
Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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