Pipe it onto a cupcake, spoon it into a tart case or fold it through a traybake batter, and it comes out of the oven exactly where you put it. Mardel's Pastelero grade is dulce de leche made for the pastry kitchen, thick and firm enough to bake with, and rich enough to eat off the spoon.

That firmness comes from the milk. Ours is made with 22% full cream milk powder and another 9% skimmed, cooked down with glucose-fructose syrup and vanilla flavouring until it is dense, glossy and the colour of dark honey, with no colours, preservatives or stabilisers in it. Cold from the tub it is stiff enough to hold a piped rosette; five to ten seconds in the microwave and it moves freely through a nozzle.

What Is Dulce de Leche? 

Dulce de leche is milk and sugar cooked slowly together until the sugars caramelise and the milk darkens to a deep golden brown. It tastes milkier and mellower than a butter caramel, and it is the filling in an alfajor, the layer in a banoffee and the ripple through a tub of gelato. The Pastelero grade is the pastry-kitchen version, firm and low enough in moisture to go into the oven with everything else.

How to Use Bakestable Dulce de Leche 

Use it straight from the tub wherever you want it to stay put: a layer in a millionaire's shortbread, a spoonful in the base of a tart before the frangipane goes on, or a disc dropped into a bonbon shell. For piping, warm it for five to ten seconds in the microwave and stir. Work in short bursts and stop as soon as it moves easily, as a long spell in the microwave thins it and it will not firm up again until it cools.

In the oven it keeps its shape at normal baking temperatures, so you can pipe it into cupcake batter, sandwich it between rounds of shortbread or spoon it into a pastry case before it bakes. A 1kg tub goes a long way: at roughly 8g of filling a bonbon that is around 125 shells, or about 40 generously topped cupcakes.

Store the tub somewhere cool and dry and out of direct light. Once you have opened it, keep it in the fridge and use it within 30 days.

Troubleshooting 

If the tub has been in a cold store, bring it back to room temperature before you pipe. Cold dulce de leche this thick will burst a piping bag long before it goes through the nozzle.

When you are baking it inside a batter or an enriched dough, keep it away from the edges of the tin. The outside of a bake runs hotter than the middle, and dulce de leche touching hot metal will darken and catch.

Pairings and Ideas 

Dulce de leche loves salt, dark chocolate, coffee, banana, pecan and anything with enough bitterness to balance all that milk. A pinch of sea salt flakes over a piped swirl is the perfect upgrade.

• Alfajores, with a thick disc between two shortbread rounds
• Millionaire's shortbread, with a dulce de leche layer in place of the caramel
• Cupcakes piped with a rosette and finished with sea salt
• Banoffee tarts, baked blind and filled cold
• Dark chocolate bonbons with a salted dulce de leche centre
• Traybakes, spooned over the batter before the top layer goes on
• Filled croissants and pastries, piped in after proving and baked
• Gelato ripples and plated desserts

Read our blog on Caramel Alternatives for more ways to use it, or try our Alfajores recipe for the classic biscuit!