Isn`t there a dulce de leche lite?

posted Fri, 15 Apr 2005

This-is-it-then wrote about making the base for a banoffee pie. I’m not sure what the “banoffee” is, but when he described boiling a can of sweetened, condensed milk to caramelize it, I knew what he was making: manjar, cajeta, dulce de leche. Food of the gods.

If you have never eaten this delicacy, don’t start. Really. You don’t want to have to go through the pain of withdrawal. I’ve never tried heroin or cocaine, but they cannot possibly be more addictive than manjar.

One of the many ways in which manjar is served. It’s the sticky, sweet brown stuff next to the butter and on top of the toast. You can get it at the Vietnamese grocery store. I bought a jar of it for my friend Leigh, who was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in Chile. She gasped and could not speak for a full minute when she saw the jar in my hands.
Source: http://www.pasqualinonet.com.ar/Dulce%20leche%20tostadas%20manteca%20600.jpg

I first had manjar when I lived in Chile. It’s used as a spread on toast, as a topping for cut-up bananas, as a filling in cake (torta de mil hojas) and as a snack by itself.

It took me a year before I even tried it. It looked and sounded disgusting – a thick, sweet caramel topping on toast? for breakfast? For a food snob, I was not very open minded.

But then – and I don’t even remember who my first pusher was – I tried that first taste.

Oh. My. Gosh.

So this was nirvana.

I quickly became a manjar junkie. I was not proud. I would buy a small tub of it and not even wait until I got home to open it and stick my finger in it.

But then I realized how many calories were in even a wee bit of this delish stuff.

LOTS.

I tried to quit. I asked my roommates not to bring it home. Keith, who could keep an entire tray of lemon bars in his room for two weeks without finishing them, defied my pleas and brought it anyhow. He thought he hid it behind the pickles in the fridge, but I am the champion hidden snack finder after years of living with my mother, who thought I didn’t know that she had chocolate hidden in a shoe box in her closet and in the base of the grandfather clock. (Sorry, mom.)

Then Kuba decided he didn’t need to help me, either. He brought manjar home and left a note saying, “Class Factotum, I spit in the manjar.”

Oh, right. Like a little bit of spit was going to stop me? Please. I just scraped off the top layer and ate the rest. It takes a lot more than a little bit of spit to gross me out.

I didn’t kick the habit until I left Chile and just couldn’t get it any more.

Now I have found it here. I have managed to refrain from buying it – if it doesn’t get into my house, I can’t eat it – but I can’t guarantee I won’t get desperate one of these days and have a relapse. Isn’t there a 12-step program for people like me?