Slow Cooker Dulce de Leche

A confession: before I made it myself, I had never eaten dulce de leche. This was a travesty, because it is clearly the best caramel ever. It's dark and sweet, but not too sweet, and milky and lovely and I have found myself, for the past few days, sneaking nibbles of it straight from the jar. Also eating a lot more bananas because it is amazing with banana and that way I can tell myself that at least part of my snack is healthy.

It's also, as it turns out, sinfully easy to make. I read a ton of recipes before deciding on this technique, and some involved things like stirring, and others warned of a slight danger of exploding cans (!), and by contrast, using the slow cooker sounded both incredibly easy and safe.

Basically, dulce de leche is sweetened condensed milk, or milk with some of the water removed and sugar added, cooked down into milky caramel sauce. So all you have to do is stick a can of sweetened condensed milk in the slow cooker, make sure that it is well covered with water, and leave it on low overnight. Presto: dulce de leche. I found conflicting advice as to whether to cook it for 8 or 10 hours, but I went with 10, because it sounded good. 

I used two different brands of sweetened condensed milk, because I found them both hiding in the back of the can cubicle where I long ago bought and stashed them, apparently waiting for just this moment. One cooked perfectly and the other turned into caramel sugar on one side, but I just scooped the dulce de leche out around it, so that was fine. The caramel sugar probably would have been good for some other purpose, but I was fixated on the sauce, so I threw it out. Actually, I'm sort of regretting that now. 

My only question now is what to do with all this glorious stuff. Other than eat it from the jar and on bananas. I made it originally to eat with sugar cookies in a bastardized, egg-free version of alfajores, and that worked great, but now I have about two cups of the stuff left. 

I think it's probably going in a Baked Alaska. More on that later. 

Slow Cooker Dulce de Leche

2 cans sweetened condensed milk (You could just do one, but if you're making the caramel sauce, I say make the caramel sauce. Plus I had two cans in the house.)

1. Put cans of milk in the slow cooker and add water until the cans are covered, and then add a bit more to be on the safe side. Seriously: cover them by an inch or so. Put on the lid.
2. Cook for 8-10 hours, longer for a darker caramel.
3. Remove cans from water using tongs; both the water and the cans will be very hot. Put the cans somewhere safe and let them cool completely. If you open too soon, a jet of scalding caramel may leap out of the can and burn you. 
4. Open and devour. I hear it can keep in the fridge for a few weeks, but I doubt I'm going to test that theory. 

The exploding cans thing, by the way, apparently happens if you put the cans of milk, covered with water, in the oven or on the stovetop and cook them this way. If the water boils away, leaving the cans exposed, they can explode, which would be both sticky and quite dangerous. The seal on the slow cooker, which is so good at keeping moisture in, eliminates this problem, although it does take a lot longer.