Home › Pastry Desserts › Caramel Junket
Caramel Junket
2 cups milk 1/3 cup sugar 1/3 cup boiling water 1 junket tablet Few grains salt 1 teaspoon vanilla Whipped cream, sweetened and flavored Chopped nut meats Heat milk until lukewarm. Caramelize sugar, add boiling water, and cook until syrup is reduced to one-third cup. Cool, and add milk slowly to syrup. Reduce junket tablet to powder, using a small mallet, add to mixture, with salt and vanilla. Turn into a glass dish, let stand in warm place until set, then chill. Cover with whipped cream and sprinkle with chopped nuts.
A rennet-set custard that never sees the oven, so its whole success rests on milk temperature. Everything else is a caramel syrup and a garnish.
- The hinge: lukewarm means 110FRennet coagulates best around 98 to 110F and is denatured by heat well above that, so milk much hotter than about 120F risks a poor set or none at all. Use a thermometer; milk that feels hot to a fingertip is already too hot.
- Junket tabletsThese are rennet tablets, still sold as junket or cheese rennet tablets by some grocery and cheesemaking suppliers. This recipe uses one tablet to 2 cups of milk; modern tablets vary in strength, so follow the dose on the package. Liquid rennet works too, at the dose on its own label.
- Crushing the tabletThe mallet is only there because the tablets are hard. Easier and more reliable: crush it and dissolve in a tablespoon of cold water, then stir that into the warm milk with a few quick strokes.
- Choose the milk carefullyUltra-pasteurized and UHT milk often sets poorly or not at all, because the high heat treatment alters the casein. Ordinary pasteurized whole milk gives the firmest set.
- Caramelizing the sugarMelt the 1/3 cup sugar dry in a heavy pan over medium heat to a deep amber, then add the boiling water off the heat and stand back \boil it back down to 1/3 cup of syrup and cool it to lukewarm before it meets the milk, or the heat will kill the rennet.
- Do not disturb itPour into the serving dish immediately after stirring in the rennet and leave it alone. Moving or stirring the dish while the curd is forming breaks it and weeps whey.
- Setting time"A warm place" means 10 to 15 minutes at room temperature, until the surface no longer follows a tilted dish. Then refrigerate at least an hour. Left warm too long it can weep whey and eventually sour.
- YieldTwo cups of milk gives four small dessert servings, or one glass dish served at table as the original intends.