Milk jam or confiture de lait

One of Tartelette's latest posts brought me right back to childhood. One of these forgotten, yet precious, details of my childhood, I should say- Milk jam. The homemade alternative to Nutella. I guess it is the French alternative to Dulce de Leche. Confiture de Lait has the consistence and taste of melted creamy caramel. And you can spread it to an abundance of things: a baked apple, banane flambee, crepes, a simple tartine. Of course you can just spoon it directly into your drooling mouth, which was my option while growing up. I think this treat originates from Normandy but it is made throughout France by any sweet tooth.

I haven't made confiture de lait for a solid (counting on my fingers...) 21 years. The only reason I am returning to the basics here is that confiture de lait would make a great macaron filling. I have yet to decide what I could flavor the shells with. Or I might have ideas but that will be the subject of later posts.

My mom's recipe was, if I remember well: 1 liter of milk, 1 "coffee cup" of granulated sugar,  a teaspoon of baking soda.
This translates into this....

Milk Jam (Confiture de Lait):

4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda

Stir all ingredients into a heavy bottom pan (or large frying pan as I used to do). The larger the diameter of your pan, the faster the process. When the milk reaches boiling point, lower your heat so the mixture can simmer for 30 to 45 minutes.
It is important to keep an eye on your pan and stir from time to time while it simmers as you want to avoid a crust (or too big of a crust) to form and the bottom to attach. Then you'd have little brown bits all over your jam. Even if this happens, stir good and long and you should be safe.
The mixture will turn syrupy and it is up to you how syrupy you want it to be (keep in mind this will harden a bit in the fridge). When I use a large frying pan, it takes me about 30 minutes to obtain a creamy caramel sauce. More stirring is required towards the end.
At this point, you could decide to add a shot of dark rum to the jam. Just because you are not a kid anymore and you don't want this to be called a kid treat. But I will leave mine plain and simple for now.
You should end up with enough jam to fill up an 8-ounce ramekin (see below pictures) or, as I used to do as a kid, an empty jam jar.

By the way, I bet I could stir some of my milk jam into a homemade batch of vanilla ice cream. Sounds like a plan.

You start with this

You should expect this to happen

You end here

It's crazy what you can do with only 3 ingredients, uh?!