Out of date ingredient - please don’t judge me…

77 replies

Happydaze2 · 08/08/2023 16:58

I’ve been tasked with making a dessert for a bbq at the weekend and have decided on banoffee pie. The recipe I have used before includes a can of Carnation caramel but the one I’ve just found at the back of my cupboard is dated Sept 2019!!! (Needless to say I rarely make desserts!) Is it safe to use, do you think?

OP posts:

FiveShelties · 09/08/2023 10:03

I would use it for me but I would worry too much about making the other guests ill if I used it for anyone else.

RoyKentFanclub · 09/08/2023 11:47

Takoneko · 09/08/2023 08:50

That sounds perfectly fine but that isn’t the correct sauce for a banoffee pie. The caramel brown colour in a dulce de leche comes from slow caramelisation of sugars in the condensed milk. Using brown sugar to achieve the brown colour and melting butter and syrup into it is a cheats shortcut to achieving something that broadly looks the same, but I’d personally rather have the the canned one where the flavour and colour comes from the non enzymatic browning process.

Dulce de leche is food of the gods. People can pretend that their homemade shortcuts are better because the pay didn’t come from a can, but I’d rather have the real thing, thanks. The way you make Dulce de leche yourself is to submerge an unopened can of condensed milk in water, secure it inside a heavy casserole pot (in case it explodes) and then simmer it slowly for about 2-3 hours. Then you have to leave it with the lid on until it cools down, open it and voila! The same stuff you can buy already canned. Alternatively, if you want to make “from scratch” you can slowly simmer milk and sugar for about 2 hours, stirring continuously.

If you like your caramel sauce then that’s fine, but I’d probably be a bit disappointed if someone gave me brown sugar and butter dissolved into condensed milk instead of a dulce de leche. I’d be polite and make the right oohs and aahs because of the effort, but it’s silly to pretend it’s the same.

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Let’s not bicker about how to make Dulce de leche. It’s a very easy thing to make. I was simply saying that making a caramel using brown sugar and butter with straight condensed milk tastes an awful lot better so is worth a try. It’s far less sweet. It isn’t a cheats way at all, it’s actually more difficult. Different people like different things of course and to be fair banoffee pies tend to go down the ultra sweet gloopy route.

Anyway, I think the upshot is that the Op is going to use her can so that’s fine.

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