TWD: Dulce de Leche Duos

This week’s TWD was chosen by Jodie of Beansy Loves Cake: dulce de leche duos!  Dulce de leche has seriously been on my list of things to try for ages so I’m grateful that Jodie’s selection forced me to finally check that one off the list this week.  Not only have I never made dulce de leche, but I’ve never even tasted it.  Dorie’s recipe calls for it in both the cookie dough as well as the filling to these sandwich cookies so the first order of business was making the dulce de leche.  I probably could have found it in one of my local grocery stores, but I figured if I didn’t try making it now, it would likely be months (or worse, years!) before I got around to it.

Luckily, this week’s P&Q’s offered a ton of options for making the dulce de leche.  I decided to try making it in my crockpot since the method was incredibly low maintenance.  You start with a can of sweetened condensed milk.  Peel the label from the can and place it in your slow cooker then cover the can completely with water.  I filled my slow cooker all the way to the top with water.  Place the cover on the slow cooker, set it to low for 8 hours and when you come back, you’ve got dulce de leche!  So simple!  I started mine before I went to bed on Sunday night and woke up Monday morning to a can of dulce de leche.  My dulce de leche wasn’t completely smooth when I opened the can, but I put it in a bowl and whisked it briefly and it was just fine.

This was one heck of a messy recipe!  I clearly need more practice when it comes to sandwich cookies because I kept overfilling them so the dulce de leche was leaking out everywhere – the counters, my hands, the plate I stacked the cookies on….  I made half of the recipe and the only change I made was to double the amount of salt based on some of the early reviews on the TWD site.  I really liked the cookies themselves.  They had the perfect soft and chewy texture and wonderful flavor!  When the dulce de leche was sandwiched in between them though, it was too sweet for me.  That’s saying a lot because generally the sweeter the better in my book.  Since I’ve never had dulce de leche before, I have zero basis for comparison.  Maybe my homemade dulce de leche was sweeter than store bought would have been?  Who knows 🙂 I’m sending the cookies to work with Shane today so we’ll see what the coworkers think.  I know at least one of them has had and loves dulce de leche so I’ll be very interested to hear her review.

Many thanks to Jodie for her selection this week!  You can find the recipe on her blog or on page 161 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.