Delicious Goan Milk Toffee From Scratch

Quick Goan Milk Cream

With Christmas just around the corner, it’s time to show you how to make one of my most favourite Goan Christmas sweets – Goan milk toffee. You could also think of it as a short-cut or quick Goan milk cream recipe using condensed milk. The only difference between Goan milk toffee and Goan milk cream is the colour, milk toffee being brownish and milk cream off-white. That’s because we make milk toffee starting with condensed milk instead of with fresh full cream milk traditionally used for making milk creams. The brown colour of our Goan milk toffee however, makes no difference to the taste.

This is a simple recipe that needs just a few ingredients but calls for considerable stirring. However, a Goan milk cream recipe in which fresh full cream milk is used requires much more stirring and is more time-consuming. The use of condensed milk in this recipe that shows you how make Goan milk toffee from scratch, cuts down the preparation time significantly. Do try making these melt-in-the-mouth, milky delicacies. You’ll be amazed at how tasty they are.

A small tip in case you don’t have moulds. You could also shape the final mix into small flattened balls like pedas by hand, and then make markings of your choice on the top with a fork or the blunt side of a knife, like we do for Goan bolinhas.

Ingredients

400g (1 can) condensed milk

200g sugar (¾ cup + 2 tbsp before powdering it)

½ cup milk

100g (¾ cup) cashew nuts

1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

2 tbsp butter

3 – 4 tsp pure ghee

Procedure

1. Soak the cashew nuts in a little water for around 20 minutes. Rinse and drain them. Grind them to a smooth paste with around 3 tbsp of the milk.
2. In a thick-walled vessel / non-stick pan, start cooking the condensed milk + the remaining milk + sugar on low heat with constant stirring for around 20 minutes till the mixture thickens a good bit. Add in the cashew nut paste and cook for around 10 minutes more. Now the mix will be considerably thickened.
3. Add the butter, and continue cooking and stirring over low heat for around 7-8 minutes more till it thickens further and reaches the soft ball stage. That is, when you drop a small amount into a bowl of cold water you’ll be able to mould it into a soft, non-sticky ball. It took almost 40 minutes to get to this stage.
4. Transfer the hot mix to a greased plate. Let it cool for around 15 minutes. Then drizzle 1 tsp ghee or butter on it and start folding the mixture over several times with a spatula for around 5-6 minutes. Then set it aside for a few minutes till it firms up enough to be shaped into a ball. At this stage, the mix will be barely lukewarm. Fill small portions of this into lightly greased moulds. Next, unmould the milk toffee / milk creams and spread the shaped pieces on a plate. Cover the plate with a paper napkin and then keep the milk toffee aside for around 10 hours or overnight to give it time to dry out some more and firm up completely. Store in an airtight container.
5. Alternatively, you could roll the mix into a slab and then cut out diamond-shaped milk creams / milk toffee pieces. To do this, cover a cutting board with parchment paper. Liberally grease the top of the paper with butter or ghee. And then, after cooling the hot milk toffee mix for around 15 minutes, transfer it to this prepared cutting board. Flatten the mix using a greased rolling pin to form a slab with a thickness of around ½ ” or a little less. Set it aside for around two hours to cool. Make diamond shaped markings on the slab and after 2 more hours cut it into diamond-shaped pieces. Spread these on a plate. Cover the plate with a paper napkin and let the milk toffee dry out some more for around 4 – 5 hours till it firms up completely. Store the milk toffee in an airtight container.

(I was able to make 29 moulded pieces and around 70 diamond-shaped ones. But remember, the exact number will depend on the size of your moulds and the diamond shapes you cut out.)

Enjoy!