With Christmas rapidly approaching, I know many of you will be baking speed demons! My First Mate here at the homestead is something of a Cookie Elf himself, so I know alllllllll that goes into making those delectable morsels!
One ingredient, that I know I, Myself often forget to pick up at the store, is evaporated milk. But- I'm here to tell you, it's soooooooooo easy to just make your own! Especially if you are like us, and always have milk on hand for your Powder Monkeys (aka- the kids!)
Let's get started!
Needs:
Pot
Wooden skewer
Spatula
waste bowl
Milk- 4 1/2 Cups
Step1: Pour 2 cups of milk into your pan, and put it on the stove.
Step 2: Take your skewer and stick it into the milk, and then mark on the skewer where the milk line is. The black line on the skewer shows where the milk touched.
Step 3: Add the other 2 1/2Cups of milk to the pot and bring the pot of milk up in temperature to just barely a boil, and then reduce the heat to keep it at a very very low gentle simmer.
Here's where patience needs to happen. It's going to take a little bit to reduce aka EVAPORATE the water off the milk. What you are doing here, is reducing the amount of water in the milk by 60%. But, like all good things, this takes time!
You will want to stir the pot every few minutes, to keep the bottom from scalding, as well, a skin will form on top. Remove the skin with your spatula and put it in the waste bowl. Here's a photo of the skins I was pulling off the top of the pot. Just dump it in there, and toss it later.
Step 4: once you notice that the amount of milk in the pot is going down, take that skewer and see if the milk matches the line you marked. If not, keep cooking! If it does, guess what?! You now have evaporated milk!
Easy peasy!!!!!
Happy Cooking Mutineers!
