Homemade condensed milk + Vietnamese coffee + a recipe from Nigella

One of my favorite ingredients is sweetened condensed milk. It adds a terrific edge to a wide variety of Chinese desserts and beverages. Also, where would an afternoon break starring Vietnamese coffee (see the quick recipe below) be without it?

My main problem is quality. A small can of the regular stuff at a Chinese market isn't at all expensive (about $1.50), but organic condensed milk will set you back around $3.50. And, no matter what you get, it's full of sugar, and I for one can always do with a lot less calories in my food. 

I recently came across a recipe for homemade condensed milk in a French cookbook, but the proportions were so off the mark that I won't even mention the book's name. Let's just say that I went to work and came up with something really lovely.

Not so secret ingredients

To cut back on the glycemic load, I use coconut sugar, which is a lot easier on my metabolism than regular white sugar, and it also lends the condensed milk a gentle tan color that I like. Then, I got my hands on some organic powdered milk from Whole Foods and went to town. Powdered milk is almost always nonfat, which is why there's a healthy dollop of butter in the mix, and I like it with a bit of salt to tame the sweetness and round out the flavors.

The result has a good balance of that heady milkiness I love with a sweet note that doesn't curl my teeth, plus a caramel edge to the color and the flavor. It's great in drinks with boba (black pearl tapioca), dessert soups laced with tiny beads of tapioca, and also as a dip for deep-fried Chinese steamed bread. Feel free to play with this recipe and adjust the sweetness with more or less sugar, or with a sugar substitute (see Tips).

This recipe makes a whole lot - perhaps more than you think you'll need - but you can cut it in half with no problem, except for that you'll be wishing you'd made a whole lot more.

Highly recommended

Another way to enjoy condensed milk in all its glory is in the recipe below by Nigella Lawson that she was gracious enough to allow me to reproduce here. This delicious recipe is featured in her wonderful Nigellissima, and I must urge you to try both the book and this super indulgent recipe for coffee ice cream.

So, here it is au naturel, along with the usual personal variations at the end. I never can leave well enough alone...

Homemade sweetened condensed milk

Zìzhì liànrǔ  自制煉乳

Makes about 4½ cups

2 cups boiling water, plus more as needed

1¾ cups coconut sugar (see Tip)
½ teaspoon sea salt

¼ cup salted butter, cut into small pieces
3 cups organic powdered milk

1. Pour the boiling water into your blender and add the sugar and butter. Blend them together on low to combine.

2. Add the powdered milk in a couple of increments, blending the mixture thoroughly on medium speed each time to combine. Continue to blend on medium to completely dissolve all of the milk granules. (If you blast it on high, a sticky foam will form, which is not bad, but it's just not all that useful.) Drizzle in more hot water if you want this thinner.

3. Pour the condensed milk into a very clean container, cool down completely, cover, and refrigerate. It will thicken up considerably once it has chilled. Use it up within a couple of weeks, but that should not be difficult.

Tips

I like coconut sugar here, but sugar substitutes like "light" sugar (half sugar, half Stevia) can be used, or you can use ½ cup of honey or agave syrup instead of 1 cup of the sugar to give it a richer flavor. 

Coconut sugar thickens the milk up quite a bit, so if you want to use plain sugar or other sugars, start out with only 1 cup of boiling water and add more in small increments until the milk has the consistency you like.

My Vietnamese coffee fix

When you come across a recipe that calls for a 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, do note that this equals the weight of the milk, not volume. So, substitute 1⅓ cups of this luscious homemade goo per can. 

Quick Vietnamese coffee
Makes 1 cup and serves 2

1 cup hot espresso
Sweetened condensed milk

Just stir however much of the condensed milk you like into the hot espresso. Done. Excellent over ice, too.

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Nigella Lawson's one-step no-churn coffee ice cream

Makes 1½ pints

1¼ cups heavy cream

⅔ cup sweetened condensed milk

2 tablespoons instant espresso powder (Medaglia d'Oro is good)

2 tablespoons espresso liqueur (like Kahlúa)

Whisk all the ingredients together until soft peaks form, and you have a gorgeous, caffe-latte-colored airy mixture, and then fill 2 x 1-pint airtight containers, and freeze for 6 hours or overnight. Serve straight from the freezer.

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I have to admit that I am even lazier than this recipe requires, since I don't want to deal with whipping the cream and so just toss everything into my ice cream maker and let it do all the work. 

Here, now, are some variations to have and to hold:

All you need is love... & this

1. Soak ½ cup dried longans (dragon eye fruit) in boiling water until plumped up, and then add them to the ice cream. They go amazingly well with the coffee flavor, and the soaking liquid is delicious as a beverage, too.

2. Fold in a big handful of chopped toasted nuts (think pecans, please) or chopped dark chocolate.

3. Serve this on top of broken buttered toast – my favorite: Toast thin slices of your favorite bread until crispy, spread it with salted butter (the salt is important here), break it up into a bowl, and scoop the ice cream on top. Curl up on the couch and watch your favorite movie. You’re welcome.

Sweet soup for uncertain days

The weather has been sort of schizo lately - one day hot, the next day cold. It seem like we will never settle down into any particular season's weather at this point and are to remain in seasonal limbo until the dog days of summer finally arrive.

Which brings me to the subject of sweet bean soup. In the West, bean soup equals savory soup, a toe-warming and usually meat-based bowl of winter pleasure. But in China, bean soups more often than not are sweet. 

Although this may seem odd if you have never tried it, sweet bean soups are delicious, offer infinite variety, and can be served hot in cold weather and cold in hot weather. Two kinds of beans are generally used here: red (adzuki) beans and green (mung) beans.

Peeled & unpeeled green beans

The weather generally determines what kind of bean is used. Red beans (hongdou) are considered warming, and so they are most often used in hot soups, although they do make guest appearances in such summer treats as red beans over shaved ice, red bean ice cream, and so forth, because they have a distinctive taste and unique texture; their skins are tender, so the only way you'll find red beans is au naturel in their little red birthday suits. 

Green beans, as you may have surmised by now, are cooling, and so summer soups will feature them since they not only taste great but help to dispel the heat. 

Green beans (lüdou) come in two forms: peeled and unpeeled. Unpeeled green beans are what you usually find in natural food stores; the skins of the beans are intact, and it's easy to see how these beans got their name. Less common, but perhaps even more intriguing, are the skinned green beans, which are yellow. Green beans in their natural state have rather tough skins, and this is fine if you are serving rustic soups, but if you want to have a smoother texture, the peeled ones fit the bill to a T. In fact, once the peeled beans have cooked and softened, they turn into a smooth mass that mingles easily with any other ingredients that happen to find their way into the pot.

Tiny tapioca pearls

Another good reason t0 use peeled green beans is that they do not require soaking; just an hour or so of gentle cooking will result in a perfect bowl of smooth soup.

One of our favorite versions is peeled green beans cooked until they are soft, and then small tapioca is stirred in to lighten up the soup. Finally, condensed milk is added to bring sweetness and a touch of richness to the soup. It is very good hot, but when chilled, this soup takes on a genuinely decadent texture.

Tapioca probably came to China via  Southeast Asia, which is why the Chinese name for tapioca is Xigong mi (Saigon rice), or Xi mi for short. Sweet soups with tapioca and coconut milk are very popular throughout southern China, but the unpeeled beans make appearances throughout much of the northern and eastern areas; this, then, is one of those types of foods that has fans all over.

The heartier second soup also can be served hot or cold or whatever suits you. They both are classics that can be gussied up or dressed down depending upon your whims and what is hanging around in your pantry. Feel free to use the condensed milk with the unpeeled beans and coconut milk plus sugar for the peeled ones. Or, you can omit both milks and just serve the soup slightly sweetened. Hot, cold, room temperature... these two soups are completely versatile and accommodating.

Tapioca adds a gentle texture

Chilled green bean soup  
Bing lüdouren tang  冰綠豆仁湯 
All over China, but probably from Guangdong

Serves 4


1 cup peeled dried green (mung) beans
7 cups filtered water, divided
4 tablespoons small tapioca pearls
Dash of sea salt
Condensed milk to taste (half to whole can), optional

1. There is no need to soak the peeled beans, so just pick them over and toss out any debris or stones, rinse them off in a sieve, cover them with about 4 cups of the water, bring the water to a boil, and then lower the heat to a simmer.  Cook the beans until they begin to fall apart. 

2. Boil the remaining 3 cups of water and add to the pot before stirring in the tapioca pearls and salt. Bring the pot to a boil and then lower the heat to medium-low so that the beans barely simmer; cook until the tapioca is transparent (although a little bit of white in the center is all right). 

3. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in condensed milk to taste. If you plan to eat this soup hot, half to three-quarters of a can will probably provide enough sweetness, but add more if you are going to serve this chilled, since the sweetness will be less noticeable if the soup is cold. Add more water if you want the soup thinner. Store covered in the refrigerator for up to three days.

Hot green bean soup

Hot green bean soup 
Lüdou tang  綠豆湯  
All over China, but probably from Hainan or Guangdong
Serves 4


1 cup unpeeled dried green (mung) beans
14 cups filtered water, plus more as needed
4 tablespoons small tapioca pearls, optional
1 can good quality coconut milk (not coconut cream), optional
Dash of sea salt
Rock sugar or sweetener to taste

1. Start this recipe at least the day before you want to serve it. Pick over the beans carefully and remove any stones or foreign matter. Place the beans in a medium work bowl and cover the beans with tap water. Soak the beans at least 8 hours or overnight.

Pour in some coconut milk for a tropical flavor

2. Drain the beans, rinse them well, and cover them with half of the filtered water. Bring the water to a boil, boil the beans for 10 minutes, and then dump out the water and rinse the beans well; this will reduce some of the unpleasant aftereffects that beans tend to offer. 

3. Cover the beans with the rest of the water, bring the pot to a boil, and then simmer the beans over medium heat until they start to fall apart. Add the tapioca, if you are using it, and simmer the beans until the tapioca is almost translucent. Pour in the coconut milk, if using, as well as the salt and sugar to taste. Simmer until the sugar is dissolved. Serve hot, at room temperature, or cold.

4. As with all bean soups, these are high in protein, and so they spoil easily. For that reason, try to eat them up in a few days and always keep them refrigerated.

Fried gold thread buns

Happy Year of the Dog!

This is one of the first banquet foods that completely blew my mind during that initial year in Taiwan. Why fried buns like this aren’t sold everywhere in the world is beyond my comprehension. 

For, they are like doughnuts, but not as sweet. and they're like beignets, but better. And, if I'm going to get all poetic on you, these are like the toast and jam the angels must dine on. And if they don’t, I would like to know why.

Gold thread buns are a variation on silver thread buns (also known as yínsījuăn 銀絲卷), which are a variation on mántóu 饅頭, or plain steamed buns. 

Silver thread buns are, I admit, much more common just about everywhere in Taiwan and North China. And you can make them easily from this recipe by simply not adding the sweet potatoes in Step 3. It’s that simple. And this will give you something that is honestly amazing.

Steamed gold thread buns

But the sweet potatoes here are so good. They make these buns look like a gorgeous cross between sushi and eggs. Plus, that mild vegetal sweetness transforms into something magically aromatic in here.

These buns are also all about texture, for the dough threads offer up a silky quality that teases the tongue underneath the tensile outer dough wrapper. 

Mashed sweet potatoes

And that’s the reason why these buns are so beloved at big northern-style banquets, at least back when I was a student in Taipei. This was treat food reserved for holidays and weddings, not something you could get every day. And yet, even then, these hadn’t reached the absolute pinnacle of dream food status, at least in my book.

No, for that you had to fry them. And serve them with a little dish of sweetened condensed milk on the side. Yes, I understand your trepidation, since we just don’t serve bread with condensed milk in the West, but stick with me here. Try this. It’s an insane level of delicious. 

Ask your Taiwanese friends whether they’d like to try a batch and watch them start to drool as their eyes roll back into their heads. Yup, they are that good.

Wrap the mash in the dough

Fried gold thread buns

Zhá jīnsījuăn 炸金絲捲

North China

Makes 24, serves 6

1½ teaspoons bread yeast

1 tablespoon sugar

1¼ cups | 300 ml warm water

Spray oil

3 cups | 450 g Chinese flour (or ⅔ all purpose flour + ⅓ pastry or cake flour), plus extra for kneading and shaping the dough

1 tablespoon softened unsalted butter or butter substitute, or vegetable oil

½ teaspoon sea salt

¼ cup | 70 g cooked and mashed red sweet potatoes, pumpkin, or carrots

Butter up the "threads"

2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar or coconut sugar

2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter or butter substitute, or vegetable oil, divided in half

Vegetable oil, as needed

Sweetened condensed milk, homemade or store bought, as needed

1. Sprinkle the yeast and sugar over the warm water, stir them in, and wait until the yeast has a heavy head of foam, about 30 minutes. While the yeast is blooming, set up your steamer. You’ll need two baskets lined with steamer paper. Spray the paper with oil. Cover the baskets, fill the pan with water, and bring the pan to a full boil with the baskets on top. This will warm up the baskets and make them ready for the buns.

Arrange the "threads" on the white dough

2. Measure the flour into a medium work bowl and pour in the yeast mixture, butter, and salt. Mix these together to form a flaky dough, and then turn this out onto a clean work surface. Knead the dough with a bit more flour until it is as soft as an earlobe and no longer sticky. Divide the dough into approximately two-thirds and one-third. Set the large ball of dough back in the bowl and cover it with a towel to rest while you prepare your “gold threads.”

3. Pat the smaller ball of dough into a cup-like shape on a heavily floured surface and pile the mashed sweet potatoes and brown sugar into the center. Use a pastry scraper in one hand to corral the dough while you knead it with the other. Add more flour as necessary until you have a soft dough that is no longer sticky.

4. Scrape your work surface clean and then smear it lightly with oil. Flatten the orange dough out into a thin rectangle, about 18 x 9 inches | 45 x 22 cm in size. Use a pastry brush to smear half of the melted butter over the dough. Fold the dough in thirds, so that you have a packet about 6 x 9 inches | 15 x 22 cm in size. Roll this up from one of the wide edges into a cylinder about 9 inches | 22 cm long. Use a sharp knife to cut the cylinder into thin strips, about ⅛ inch | 0.3 cm wide. Lay these strips out flat on a clean work surface, brush the rest of the melted butter on them, and let them rest while you prepare the bun wrappers.

5. Scrape your work surface clean and lightly flour it. Divide the white dough in half. Working on piece at a time, roll one piece out into a thin sheet, about 20 x 7 inches | 45 x 11 cm in size. Pick up a small bunch of the orange dough threads and pull on them gently so that they turn into strings. Don’t worry if some of them break—no one will notice later on. Lay these strings lengthwise down the center of the white sheet of dough. Repeat with the orange dough threads until you have used up half of them.

6. Fold one long end of the dough over the orange dough threads and then continue to roll it up and over the orange threads to form a long rope. Pinch the end of the dough into the cylinder to seal it. Then, lightly roll the dough with the palms of your hands to even it out, and then gently pull on it to make it around 10 inches| 25 cm long.

7. Trim off the ends and cut the rope into 12 even pieces. Roll each one of the little buns to return it to a nicely round shape (see photo on the upper right). Set these on the oiled paper in the steamer and steam the buns over high heat for about 10 minutes. Once the buns have cooked through, nudge each one loose from the paper while they are still hot. Repeat with the rest of the orange and white doughs until you have formed 24 small buns. These can be frozen at this point, refrigerated and then reheated, or eaten immediately. But for pure sensory overboard, go to Step 8.

Frying up the buns

8. To fry these buns, set a 1 quart | 1 liter pan over medium-high heat and fill it with about 2 inches | 5 cm oil. The oil will be ready when chopsticks inserted in the hot oil are immediately covered with bubbles. Slide in 4 or so buns. Do not overcrowd them, as they will fry up fast, and you don’t want them to stick to each other. Turn the buns over as they brown. When they have turned a golden brown all over, remove to a plate lined with paper. Serve immediately with a saucer filled with sweetened condensed milk.