{Cajeta Recipe} How to Make Goat Milk Caramel Sauce! (2024)

FAQs

Why is my cajeta not thickening? ›

If it's too thin, continue simmering; if it's too thick, stir in a little water. (The slower this final simmering goes, the darker the cajeta.) Strain into a storage container. Once cool, store tightly covered in the refrigerator for a month or more.

The difference between cajeta and other caramel sauces such as caramel and dulce de leche is that cajeta is made out of goat's milk whereas most others are usually made out of cow's milk.

For each cup (240 mL) of caramel sauce that you need to thicken, run 1 tbsp (14.7 mL) of cold water into a measuring cup, and slowly stir in 1 tbsp of cornstarch. Pour the cornstarch mixture into your pot caramel sauce, and stir constantly. Keep the sauce on low heat until it begins to thicken.

2. Too short of a cooling time: Caramel sauce thickens significantly as it cools, so let the caramel cool for the appropriate time to achieve the right thickness. If the sauce is still too thin after cooling completely, place it back on the stovetop and reheat it on low heat for a few additional minutes.

Pour back into a prepared buttered pan. If caramels are too soft, that means the temperature didn't get high enough. Again place the caramel back into a sauce pan with a couple of tablespoons of water and heat to 244°F.

Homemade Cajeta

Keep it at a steady medium simmer for about one hour and a half, stirring occasionally, every 15 to 20 minutes or so, with a wooden spatula or spoon. The mix will gradually thicken and darken. After about an hour and a half, the liquid will have thickened and reduced and the simmer will become stronger.

For best results, simmer; if it starts to boil, simply lower the temperature, stirring every few minutes, and it should be fine. The baking soda neutralizes the milk's pH levels and makes cajeta smooth. It also assists with the Maillard reaction, the browning of amino acids with sugars to create caramel.

Raw or low-temperature pasteurized goat's milk (often found in local markets) will coagulate toward the end of the cooking process, giving the cajeta a slightly grainy consistency, so save those delicately flavored milks for fresh applications.

Caramel can be produced in so many forms such as, sauce, a chewy candy, or a hard candy because of how much of an ingredient is added and the temperature it is being prepared at.

The water evaporates, leaving sugar crystals behind. If even one sugar crystal falls back into the pan of cooking caramel, it starts a chain reaction of sugar crystals and the entire pan will harden. The result? Gross, grainy caramel that is unusable in most recipes.

What to do if your caramel is too runny? ›

If the caramel is too thin, simmer the caramel on medium heat for 5-10 minutes to thicken it (the caramel will not continue to darken). Keep in mind that the caramel will thicken significantly once cool. Likewise, if the caramel is too thick, thin by stirring a tablespoon or two of heavy cream.

When making a wet caramel, water is added to help dissolve the sugar before cooking. Like dry caramel, you want to gently move the sugar mixture in that same side-to-side paintbrush-like fashion until the sugar dissolves.

If you add the butter too early while the caramel is still pale yellow, the sauce will be too sweet and lack flavor. and if you wait too long and the caramel turns brown, the sauce will taste bitter and burnt.

Keep an eye on the heat: Caramel can go from perfect to burnt in a flash. So, think of it like sunbathing – you want to get that perfect tan without getting burnt. Maintain a medium heat and be patient. Don't crank up the heat just to speed up the process – slow and steady wins the race.

Thickness: in order to obtain a really thick dulce de leche, you have to bake it for a really long time. However, the longer you bake it, the more scorched it gets. Frosting use: if the dulce de leche is too lumpy it won't work well for frosting.

Tip: To thicken stovetop dulce de leche, make a slurry of 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch with 1 1/4 teaspoons milk. Bring it to a very slow boil over medium heat, whisk this slurry into the dulce de leche, and continue to boil slowly for five minutes before removing from heat and cooling.

If you find that your condensed milk hasn't thickened, that means that the pan was removed from the heat too early. This can be corrected by returning your mixture to a pan and carefully continuing the heating process.