Condensed milk cake with vibrant lime flavour has a tender texture like a very buttery pound cake. You can use condensed milk (always sweetened, as opposed to evaporated milk) of any brand, Nestle Carnation or a supermarket own label.
How to use condensed milk in a cake
This was quite a project. Convinced I was being inventive, I set out to make a cake with condensed milk. Fat, sugar, protein, I thought, are present in many a cake so I can just replace those with condensed milk which is as everyone knows very sweet, very fatty and very, well, milky. Basically – just add flour.
Just add flour?
But as I’m not keen on wasting ingredients pointlessly, I did a quick reckon. My spirits fell – clearly thousands of people out there are making hundreds of condensed milk cakes. Well, nihil novi, everything has been invented etc.; but I could still do my cake testing.
I chose to ignore Internet, but my one quick glance revealed that you don’t just add flour. Apparently eggs and fat and even some sugar still need to be added. Hey, how about a cake made with FLOUR as my revolutionary next project?
Recipe testing is fun
The first attempt was a brick – too much flour, not enough fat. The second with no extra sugar added – hideous. The third and fourth were nice and I couldn’t decide which was better because apart from using different fats they also happened to have unequal lime zest content.
Is this better? But is it better BETTER or because it has a better lime tang? My testers were undecided so I had to make an arbitrary decision.
Butter or oil?
Butter or oil? That’s what the final choice came down to. At least that much I knew: butter means nice flavour and oil – softer and tenderer texture.
I decided to go for butter (three secrets of French cuisine: butter, butter and more butter) but if your instinct whispers ‘no!’, or if you’re right out of butter in the house, just substitute oil in the same quantity of weight and follow the recipe otherwise as it is.