Caramel mini cheesecake and dulce de leche instructions

When I was young we used to cook up condensed milk and eat it out of the tin.

I loved how with just heat regular condensed milk would change consistency and turn golden, sticky and yummy, I didn't realise what we were doing was making Dulce de leche. I would have felt so worldly if only I had of known.

Dulce de leche is a fancy way of saying condensed milk cooked up in it's tin in a big pot of simmering water for a few hours. It turns into that rich flowing delicious looking caramel you see on the top of these cheesecakes. You don't need to add anything, it just......is.

Really it is super easy but if your not into the whole cooking for 4 hours thing you can buy dulce de leche already made up at some good deli's or grocery stores. I noticed that Amazon has a stack and it seems that Nestle in some countries do all the hard work for you - nice!

I know - YUM

In Australia you can buy Top and Fill caramel and use in place of the home made dulce de leche which is perfectly acceptable (although I prefer the taste of the home made dulce de dulce, but y'all know I generally say use what makes YOU happy).

When I make up tins of dulce de leche I either make it up after the kids go to sleep or when they are at nana's house as I am a bit uptight about boiling water and if they are in the house I have to hover near the stove the whole time. (Yes Mr Sweet calls me a helicopter mum and sometimes even makes those annoying helicopter sounds to me - yeah I know really !)

Dulce de leche or Caramel baked Cheesecake
You will need 2 tins of dulce de leche - one for the cheesecake recipe and one to spoon over the top. You will not use all the second tin so you could either freeze it to use another time or heat it up and spoon it over icecream, or cake, or pretty much anything :) 

Dulce de leche (you can keep in an airtight container in the fridge up to 1 week)

Tins of condensed milk with 2 holes pierced in the top (you will need 2 tins for this recipe)

Place tins of condensed milk into a large deep saucepan with water surrounding them. The water should come up to he top of the condensed milk tins but not lap over the rim (otherwise you will get water into the holes). Bring the water to simmer and cook the tins for 4 hours. Keep adding water to the saucepan so the water remains level with the tops of the tins (you know just ever now and then don't get too uptight about it).

After 4 hours turn off the heat, allow to cool and then remove the tins from the saucepan. Take off the top of the tin and scoop out all the caramel/ dulce de leche.

Cheesecake - makes 14 largish mini cupcakes
14 Oreo cookies
625g (21oz) cream cheese at room temperature
1 tin condensed milk made into dulce de leche (see above instructions)
3 eggs at room temperature
14 large muffin papers (I bought these ones from woolies)
Packet of soft caramels for decoration (optional) I used Jersey caramels

Preheat oven to 140C (280 F)

Line the muffin tins with the muffin/cupcake papers. Place one single oreo in the bottom of each paper.

Beat the cream cheese using a mixer at medium speed until just smooth, add the dulce de leche.

Mix until well combined. Reduce speed to low and add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition until just combined.

Spoon the mixture into the large muffin papers dividing mixture evenly between the papers. If you are using large ones like I did the mixture should make 14, if you only have smaller cupcake cases do not overfill the cases as the mixture will rise a little during baking, make them around 3/4 full.

Bake until the mixture is just setting in the center, around 16- 20 mins for the larger size muffin cupcake, check after 14mins if you are making smaller sized cakes.

They will be cooked when the middle of the top of the cheesecake is no longer wet and looks just set.

Allow to cool in the trays for 10-15min and then pop in an airtight container in the fridge until chilled.

Serve topped with extra dulce de leche and caramels.

If you would like to make the dulce de leche more fluid for serving like it appears in the pictures heat it up on short bursts at high in the microwave in a microwave safe bowl and mix with a spoon until smooth.

Cheesecakes will keep in airtight container up to 3 days in fridge.

and here is the link to my book Sweets on a Stick and there actually is a cheesecake pop recipe in the book, which is super delicious if I do say so myself.....and I promise if I ever work out how to pop a link in the sidebar I will stop popping these in every post :) I know I have said it before but it is a US Release however there is a conversion chart in the back to the book for metric.

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

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