Making Condensed Milk Without Powdered Milk

I normally just buy condensed milk.  It's cheap and delicious.  To be honest, I think condensed milk tastes BETTER than dulce de leche, and if it had a better name like dulce de leche or confiture de lait, as it's known in French, it'd probably be touted as a finer culinary product.  Anyway, my local Korean grocery store sells condensed milk for 7,000 won ($7).  I know condensed milk doesn't cost more than $2 in the states, and thankfully the Foreign Food Mart in Itaewon sells it for 2,500 won.

Before trying to make condensed milk, I didn't know condensed milk was made from powdered milk.  Almost every google search I punched in returned recipes using powdered milk or sometimes evaporated milk.  This made no sense to me since condensed milk sounds like it should be made from real milk.  So I found one recipe outlining how to make condensed milk from un-scienced milk.  I adapted the technique a bit and made the butter optional.

Apple Brownies from Surplus Apples

Fruit prices are outrageous in Korea - so outrageous that every time I walk by a seedy fruit truck where an ajushi with one leg is yelling at you to buy kiwis, I actually do it.  And that's how I ended up with a giant potato sack of apples.

I love apples, but I've been spoiled.  Growing up, I ate through every kind of apple there is.  In Korea, there is one apple - the Fuji apple.  No Granny Smiths, no Red Delicious, no Gala, no Honey Crisp, no Macintosh, no, no, no.

Staring at a colossal bag of racially uniform apples growing squishier each day made me wring my hands in worry, waving apples in my sister's face and accusing her of not eating her share...it was time to scour the internet for some way to bake these apples to freedom.

Dulche de Leche So Good I'm Openly Weeping Right Now

I had the idea to make dulce de leche to go with the "ice cream in a bag" I'll be making this weekend right after I go bungee jumping.  Do I sound obnoxious?  Cause my life really is that interesting.  (Said as I sit here in my granny underwear eating dulce de leche out of the jar with my paws.)

In case you don't know the wonders of dulce de leche, it's a Latin American caramel that's made by reducing milk with sugar and vanilla.  In French, it's known as confiture de lait which makes it sound even better than it already is.  I've had dulce de leche on ice cream, on a crepe in France, on a "pancake" in Thailand, and drizzled on top of cheesecake, brownies, lattes, my face, etc.