Hi guys,
When I used to go to HK style cafes a lot
(by a lot I mean every day) I used to get
the same drinks every time: hot or iced milk
tea, iced milk coffee or dong ying yang; which
was half milk tea and half milk coffee.
I stopped going to those cafes when 1) became
a broke college student and later a broke
college graduate and never went back when
I became vegan since those places aren't very
vegan friendly.
Still, I missed having those drinks. One key
ingredient was sweetened condensed milk and
even though I know it is out there, I haven't
found a vegan version in my local grocery
stores. Finally, I got around to veganizing
that ingredient and it's so easy, I just had
to share this with you guys.
I started with ordinary store-bought unsweetened
soy milk. I'm not particular about brand for
this one just so long as it isn't a reduced
fat variety.
For this recipe I used two cups. It goes directly
into a medium sized saucepan over high heat.
Then in goes a cup of sugar. I know you guys
are going to ask if you can sub stevia, coconut
sugar, date sugar, etc. The short answer,
is no. You will not get the same kind of flavour
or texture if you use those. However, I always
encourage you guys to do whatever fits into
your lifestyle and experiment. If you try
this recipe with other sweeteners, please
come back and let the rest of the class know
how it turned out in the comments below.
Now we wait for this to boil. It took about
five minutes; don't walk away from this. Once
it starts to boil, it will bubble up quickly.
Stir it vigorously to settle it back down
or remove it from the heat completely.
Turn the heat to medium, and continue to let
this cook until the liquid reduces to about
one cup's worth.
How long this takes will depend on your stove's
heat, which brand of soy milk you used, the
humidity in your kitchen and even the altitude.
You can stir it every so often. See this build
up on the side? I like to help it dissolve
back into the mixture by tilting the pot like
this and mixing the bits in.
Like with cooking caramel or syrup, you need
to keep a eye on this. It only takes a couple
seconds to go from peacefully cooking on the
stove to bubbling over and making a big mess.
The mixture will turn from milky white to
cream colored to a bit dark like this.
In the final ten minutes or so, I had to stir
it constantly to keep the milk from bubbling
over. The alternative to this is to reduce
the heat and just cook it for longer but I
wanted to minimize the cooking time.
You can pour it into a measuring cup to see
if the liquid has reduced enough.
This isn't reduced enough so I poured it back
in the pot and kept cooking.
In total, this batch took about 45 minutes
of cook time. Is it a long time? Yup. Is it
worth it? I think so. Especially since I haven't
found sweetened condensed soy milk in any
of my local stores.
Now I can finally make my milk coffee, almost
like they do in Hong Kong style cafes. I only
had large chunky ice cubes; they use fine
crushed ice in restaurants. So this looks
different, but it tastes just as delicious
as I remember.
Vietnamese iced coffee is also made similarly
but with a darker roast coffee and a french
drip filter that I don't have.
In Chinese cuisine, condensed milk is used
in lots of things, including along side plain
steamed buns, also known as Mantou.
What would you use this vegan sweetened condensed
milk for? Let me know in the comments below.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial; thank you
very much for watching! If you liked it, please
give the video a thumbs up and share it on
Facebook, Twitter or whereever. If you're
on instagram, please tag me if you make this
or another one of my recipes. I can't even
tell you how happy it makes me when you guys
share those photos with me. I get positively
giddy.
Thanks again for watching. Bye for now!
