Pastel de Cándida, Cándida's Pie -- a Pinedo recipe

It's time for another Pinedo recipe!  This time my sweet tooth was working hard on my thoughts, so I picked a dessert recipe.  I looked through the pie section and chose one that looked intriguing.  It is on pages 181 - 182 and another copy is on page 188.

Cándida's pie.

Boil a kettle cup of sugar and a half of milk: let it boil until the state of cajeta.

           The pies are made with rich dough and after they are cooked, the inside of them is filled with the cajeta, smearing them with fresh cream and sprinkling them with walnuts and almonds ground in the mortar.

         Put the pies in the oven right away to dry.

Cándida's pie.

         Boil a kettle cup of very rich milk with another cup of sugar to the point of cajeta. After cooking, the pie crusts are covered with the milk mixture. They are spread with fresh cream and sprinkled with walnuts and clean almonds broken in the mortar.

         Place the pies in the oven for five to ten minutes to dry and brown.

This recipe has a person's name on it -- and I wish I knew who Cándida was.  But it is interesting, too, to know that cándida also translates to "white", which the pie is when you pour cream over the top, or it translates to "candy", which describes the filling.

To give you fair notice, I failed making this recipe.  In the verdict section below, I will give you my recommendations on how to make it that may not fail.

My Redaction

64 ounces whole milk (too much!)

128 ounces sugar

1 pie crust to cover a 9-inch pie pan (you can do an 8-inch pan, too), pre-baked

Fresh cream, about 1/4 cup

1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and almonds.

Don't use all that milk

Boil the milk and sugar together until it gets thick, somewhere between the thread stage (230 degrees F) and the soft ball stage (240 degrees F).  Let cool until spreadable, not runny hot.

Pour the filling in the baked crust.  Spread it around and level the surface.

Pour enough cream over the top to make a thin layer.  Sprinkle with nuts.

Put the pie into the oven to dry it.  I used a warm oven for 20 minutes.

My Notes

Pinedo suggests either a 2-to-1 ratio of sugar to milk (in the first recipe) or a 1-to-1 ratio (in the second recipe).  I decided to use the 2-to-1 ratio.  

I also (foolishly) chose to start with 1/2 gallon of milk, when I should have, more likely, used 2 cups.  I wasn't sure how much the mixture would reduce to during cooking, and I am still not sure what volume a kettle cup holds. 

The idea of cooking to the state of cajeta means to make a thick mixture.  This mixture of only milk and sugar matches the more modern cajeta recipes, which makes a caramel often called dulce de leche.  That is what I set out to do.

I have previously attempted to make a cajeta and was reasonably successful (see this post).  I have read advice online to cook it in an uncovered slow-cooker.  I started my milk and sugar mixture this way.  It barely fit in the slow-cooker, and after 6 hours of it cooking on high, there was no change in the mixture other than the sugar being dissolved and it was a little foamy.  I thought that at this rate, it would take days to get the mixture thick.

In the beginning

After six hours

So I put it in my Dutch oven on the stove, brought it to a boil, and let it slowly boil.  I was surprised when it overflowed the pan.  When hot, the mixture expanded a lot!

Not the Dutch oven but still had issues with it boiling over.

Then I moved half the volume to another pan, brought both pans to a simmer, and let them cook until they reached the soft-ball stage.  I kept checking their temperatures and doing a cold water test, and I wasn't convinced they would thicken well until I got it to the soft-ball stage.

Once spread in the crust, the mixture was tacky but not very sticky to the touch.  

I poured on the cream and decided to cover the whole surface well with the nuts.  I used about an equal mixture of walnuts and almonds.

My oven was heated to warm, and I left the pie in there for 20 minutes.  I could not tell if the cream had dried or browned, but the nuts appeared to have absorbed much of the cream.

I let the pie cool before serving.

The Verdict

There was a lot of leftover filling, which I spread into shallow, foil-lined casserole dishes.  This filling crystallized as it cooled, turning into a candy that was harder than fudge but not truly hard.  I could break it up with a knife into chunks, although sometimes the chunks shattered.  

This did not bode well for the pie filling.  So I was not surprised that its filling was also very firm.  Disappointing, because I expected (well, hoped for) a softer filling.  At least it didn't all flow off the crust when I cut it.

I still ate some of it.  It was tasty but too sweet, really.  The firm filling was too firm, so sometimes I warmed it up in the microwave.  This melted the filling a little and made it more like a pie.  (Careful!  It can burn your mouth!)

I liked the cream on top and I especially liked the nuts, which toned down the sweetness.  Sometimes I poured more cream on top as I was serving it, which also helped tone down the sweetness.  My guest taster loved the pie even with the hard filling, which surprised me.

It has to be declared as a failure, though.  The filling was supposed to be soft.  I expected it to be sweet but not THAT sweet.  Perhaps the 1-to-1 ratio would have been better.

The extra filling candy went to my work and was shared with many people.  One woman, born and raised in Mexico, noted that she has had that candy before -- so I know I am not the only person who has crystallized dulce de leche.  It makes a good candy in small doses.  People commented that they were surprised it was only made of milk and sugar.  It was brown and rich, and made me think it had vanilla in it.  

So how would I fix the filling?  

If I wanted to make the filling from scratch, I would use perhaps 2 cups of milk and 2 to 4 cups of sugar.  This would cook faster and not have such an opportunity to crystallize when cooling.  (Although you wouldn't have the extra candy!)  I'm not sure if I would stop it at the thread stage or take it to the soft-ball stage.  More experimentation is needed.

Or I could buy two cans of sweetened condensed milk and boil them unopened for a few hours while completely submerged in water.  Once they are cooled (in the water), they can be opened.  The internet recommends this, but you do have to be careful to keep the cans submerged.  I have done this in the past, and it makes a good creamy caramel filling.

Or I could buy cans of dulce de leche.  

I would make my choice based on how much of a hurry I was.  Keep in mind this makes a very sweet pie.  The cream does help, and you can pour a thicker layer if you'd like.  You can also choose how much coverage you want with the nuts.  I covered the cream layer completely.  If you want to show the color contrast between the cream and the nuts, use fewer.  That is assuming drying the pie in the oven keeps the cream white.

Officially, a failure, but all was not lost.