The buttery, caramal-y, awesome-y decadent goodness of cajeta must be experienced...it just can't be explained!
Wikipedia tries.
Check this out:
Drizzle it on cinnamon buns, over oatmeal or fruit, a little drizzled in yogurt or your morning cup of coffee...over ice cream, over a slice of cake...it is AMAZING!!!
The recipe is simple enough.
1 gallon of goats milk (unpasteurized, please!)
1 vanilla bean (broken and halved lengthwise) or 1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
4 cups white cane sugar OR brown grated sugar (the hard sugar cones you get at Mexican grocers)
1 teaspoon of baking soda (to prevent foaming)
2/3 cup water
Stir that all together and heat until simmering. DO NOT STIR IT AGAIN! (If you do, you *break* the mixture and it will not process properly)
Now walk away. Don't stir it, don't even think about it...for at least 10 hours. That's right, it has to simmer UNDISTURBED for 10 to 12 HOURS.
After around 10 hours, you can look at it. If it has cooked down well, the simmering should still be going on, but the bubbles should be breaking slower...you should see that it has turned to caramel.
My stove is kinda slow, so I simmered mine for 12 hours.
Do a spoon and saucer test.
Dip a spoon into the simmering mixture and watch how it sheets and drips off the spoon. Is it thick and drips slow?
Put a spoonful on a saucer and let it cool for 15 minutes. It should thicken even more when it is cool.
Taste it. Is the texture right? (The flavor will be awesome!)
If everything seems right, pour into canning jars and put on lids and let cool.
If you used actual vanilla bean and not extract, pour through a sieve to catch the bean pieces.
Time consuming, yes. Worth it? OH YES!
My 1 gallon of goats milk made 2 quarts of cajeta.
I gave some to my neighbor (she is Mexican) to get an unbiased opinion. Actually, I figured she would be most critical because her mother used to make cajeta for special holidays, etc.
She LOVED it! Said it was just as good as her mother's!
Now THAT'S a compliment!
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The cactus flowers are still in bloom here...finally getting the hang of the camera...
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STILL no rain here! (I think it's 115 days now!)
Lost a hell of a lot of my garden due to dust storms, heat and the absolute dryness, even though I am watering them nightly.
A dry warm wind blows even at night here.I am thinking I need to mulch like crazy and maybe water once after dark and then again right before sunrise. (Hey, I am already up then anyway!)
I am going to try to replant some this week...maybe if I continuously plant, some of my plants will make it through!
two quick questions as i totally snag this recipe for the day I HAVE 10-12 hours;
ReplyDeleteis the pot covered or uncovered while simmering? and can one use a crock pot???????????
Kellie, the pot is UNCOVERED and no, no crock pot recipe found for this. You really have to get it to a higher temp. Most recipes want it at what they call *an active simmer*, which is more of low boil.
ReplyDeleteI mean, you could attempt to alter the recipe a bit and make it in a crock pot. I'd experiment with 1 quart of goats milk before I committed to experimenting with a full gallon! One quart + 1 cup sugar, a dash of baking soda and a dash of vanilla extract and maybe 1/4 cup water? (My math so sucks, lol!)
UGH! I can't wait to have my own goats or cows to try this!
ReplyDeleteMust it be raw milk? Or is this something I can make with the swill from the supermarket?
Violet, it only works properly with raw goats milk. You can make caramel with cows milk, but this has a different taste. There's a richness, sorta a darker flavor and a bit of a background *tang* that you do not get with a cows milk caramel.
ReplyDeleteKnow anybody with goats? Maybe you could offer some canning jars or something in trade for a gallon of milk...or offer to split the resultant cajeta with them if they let you have a gallon to process!