Dulce de Leche Made from Coconut Milk and Smoked Over Cocoa Shells
Argentina's slow-cooked milk caramel remade with Thai coconut milk and finished in a smoker over cocoa bean husks. Dairy-free by accident, extraordinary on purpose, and the base of a dessert our kitchen cannot stop making.
- 2 tins (800 ml) full-fat coconut milk
- 250 g sugar
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 1 vanilla pod, split
- Pinch of salt
- 50 g cocoa bean shells for smoking
- Put the coconut milk, sugar, vanilla and salt in a wide heavy pan. Bring to a simmer and stir in the bicarbonate; it will foam.
- Cook over low heat, stirring every few minutes, for about 90 minutes, until thick, deep brown, and a spoon drawn through leaves a trail that holds.
- Pour into a shallow metal tray. Set a stovetop smoker with the cocoa shells, light them until smouldering, place the tray inside and smoke, covered, for 20 minutes.
- Stir the smoke through, cool, and jar. Keeps three weeks in the fridge.
Dulce de leche is milk and sugar cooked for hours until the water leaves and the sugars brown into a thick, spoonable caramel. Every Argentine has an opinion about the right consistency. Coconut milk carries a similar amount of fat and enough natural sugar to caramelise, and Thai cooks reduce it into sweets and curries constantly. Our kitchen cooked a coconut dulce de leche by the Argentine method and then did something to it that neither country would recognise: smoked it.
The smoke comes from cocoa bean shells, the papery husks that chocolate makers discard by the tonne and that burn with a sweet, chocolatey smoke. A tray of the finished coconut caramel, still warm, sits in a stovetop smoker over smouldering husks for twenty minutes. The result is a dulce de leche that tastes of toasted coconut, brown butter it does not contain, and a chocolate smoke that arrives after you swallow. It is the colour of old leather and thick enough to hold a spoon upright.
Notes on the method
Use full-fat coconut milk without stabilisers, two tins to 250 grams of sugar and a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, which helps the browning as it does in the Argentine original. It takes about ninety minutes of slow cooking and patient stirring. Cocoa shells are sold by bean-to-bar chocolate makers and as garden mulch; use the food-grade ones. If you have no smoker, a pinch of smoked salt stirred in at the end gives a distant cousin of the effect.
What to do with it
Spread on toast. Spoon over grilled pineapple. Fold into whipped coconut cream for an alfajor filling. Or, our favourite, warm it slightly and pour over a scoop of plain vanilla ice cream with a scatter of toasted coconut and a few flakes of salt, then say nothing and wait.
