Homemade Dulce de Leche recipe with only 5 ingredients. This sauce is great for cakes, ice cream, cookies or just eat it with a spoon on its own.
What is Dulce de Leche:
It is a sweet sauce made with sugar and milk, very popular in Latin America. In Colombia is also known as Arequipe and Mexico as Cajeta. You will find this delicious dessert by different names, but the sauce is practically the same. You can also add cinnamon and vanilla extract for extra flavor.
Now days you can find it in canned at the Latin aisle in a lot of supermarkets in the United States, but I love making it from scratch it's always better than store-bought and very easy to make.
Homemade Dulce de Leche Recipe (Arequipe)
Ingredients
- 96 oz whole milk (12 cups)
- 1 ½ of pounds sugar
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cinnamon stick
Instructions
- In a medium pot, combine all the ingredients and bring to a boil.
- Reduce the heat to medium-low, stirring often with a wooden spoon for about 3 hours or until the color changes to caramel and the mixture is thick as a pudding. Let it cool.
- Pour into a glass container and cover. Refrigerate up to a week.
Notes
Nutrition
Dulce de Lehe is creamy, sweet and delicious on top of ice cream, to fill cakes, pastries, frosting or just eat it by the spoonful. My favorite way!
I grew up eating dulce de leche and it’s one of my favorite desserts. This delicious and traditional sauce is called Arequipe in the region of Antioquia, Colombia, manjar blanco in other parts of the country and in the rest of South America it has different names such as dulce de leche, manjar Blanco and cajeta. In Colombia we also serve Arequipe with obleas or saltine crackers or just as a base for some typical desserts.
Recipes with Dulce de Leche to try:
Chocolate Cake Filled with Dulce de Leche
Dulce de Leche and Coconut Cake Roll
Carlos
This was an awesome recipe and took me back to Medellin. Quick question I’m hoping someone can help with. Does anyone know how to get the Arequipe to come out creamier? The flavor was phenomenal but it was a bit stickier than I would like. Thank you to anyone who might be able to help!
Alex
Hello Hazel!
Don't know if someone already answered your question or not but she's referring to US liquid ounces., so roughly 3 L of milk. This is one of those recipes that do not require precise measurements. I have watched many a grandmother prepare this using approximate values (or what they jokingly referred to as eye-measurements). The spices can also vary from family to family: cinnamon or cinnamon-ground anis seed mix, plus maybe a pinch of allspice. I've also seen some use other spices like cardamom, and ground cloves. One of my grand-aunts lived in the Dutch Antilles for many years and she would use a pinch or two of a spice mix called spekulaas in addition to cinnamon.
Hope this helps!
Stella
Do you have a recipe for obleas? I love this recipe! Thank you, Erica.
Hazel Murphy
Hi Erica
I want to try this recipe very much but I want to get it right. Can you please tell me whether 96 oz milk refers to US fluid ounces or UK fluid ounces? They are different units of measurement. I am in New Zealand and here we use the metric system so volume is measured in litres and millilitres. I can easily do an accurate conversion but only if I know the original unit.
Brad
There is a harder ariquipe that is used in bakeries to make roscones de bocadillo in Colombia. Do you know how to.male that or do you know if it is commercially available in the United States?