Chocolate dulce de leche bars with shortbread crust and Fleur de Sel
Crunchy, crispy and buttery biscuit with a rich chocolate and milky caramel cream on top
Published originally on my blog on 1 May 2010
Dulce de leche. I love the way it rolls off the tongue. But what is it? Its name literally means milk candy and it is a thick caramel cream sauce. No, correction, it is a thick caramel cream sauce to die for.
I didn't discover dulce de leche by eating it in some little parador (restaurant) by the beach in Uruguay. No, the way I discovered it, was completely and utterly pedestrian. I was watching an Australian cooking show featuring South American recipes (that's one of the ways to have a culinary travel around the world) and I was smitten by the creamy caramel delight that the woman in the show was preparing and that she called manjar blanco, which I later found out is another name for dulce de leche. Oh, cajeta is another name for it too, and confiture de lait is how the French call it.
There are many ways of preparing dulce de leche though I've only tried one of them so far. You can use the painstaking method of stirring a mixture of milk and sugar in a pan for several hours until it becomes thick and creamy, the easier method of pouring sweetened condensed milk in a baking dish and cooking it in the oven until it's caramelized or, the easiest way of them all and my personal favorite, of simply boiling an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk in a pan, after you've made a couple of holes at the top (we don't want any explosions happening now, do we?) and leaving it in simmering water for 2-3 hours until it thickens. You need to check on it and add more water but it definitely beats the 3-hour stirring method.
Dulce de leche can be eaten just like that, out of the jar or drizzled on top of ice cream and pies but for me, right now, this is not enough. I need to take it a little further. I'm not content with just dulce de leche, I want something more luscious, I want a bit of variety, a bit of pizazz. I want the combination of dulce de leche, chocolate, and biscuit. And I found it all in this recipe. A mouthwatering recipe of a delicious dessert, candy, sweet, however you wanna call it.
By adding egg yolks, cream and dark chocolate to the caramel sauce, you transform the dulce de leche to a thicker, richer, deep-flavored chocolate-caramel cream that is so addictive you can't even fathom it. The shortbread crust makes an amazingly tasty and crumbly biscuit to rest the cream upon, creating a harmonious contrast of textures and the light sprinkling of fleur de sel (hand-harvested sea salt) on top completes the picture, creating a harmonious contrast of flavors.
Let me be totally honest here. This dessert is not an innocent one. Firstly, it takes a long time to prepare, secondly, it is full of calories and lastly, it's not the healthiest of sweets out there but it is one of the most exquisite and tasteful ones. At least to me it is. You have to make your own and weigh in on this.
I like cutting it into two-bite or even one-bite sized pieces because of its richness. When you offer a piece to someone, they will immediately get a whiff of caramel blended with a chocolate aroma. When they put it into their mouth, the real ride will begin. The crunch of the crumbly and buttery biscuit along with the scrumptious caramel cream, make the best first impression. The rich dark chocolate flavor hits first, accompanied by the subtle sharpness of the fleur de sel that balances the sweetness of it all. Finally, they'll sense the milky caramel and they'll be left with an aftertaste of buttery and caramel-y enchantment. They'll want more and more and so will you. It is worth the effort and the calories, believe me.
