Using Russian tins of caramelised condensed milk found at a German supermarket.

Shopping across the border

Joy – I found a stack of Russian condensed milk tins at a German supermarket, and while that is nothing special, this is: they were already caramelised. That saves me a couple of hours of au-bain-marie cooking and a possible spoiled pan, not to mention the risk of exploding tins.
Wondering how I knew what was in them? Well, it says so in German on the other side :-) And with the hint, I could trace “moloko” to “milk” and “sacharom” to “sugared”. Still… I was a bit sceptic. Contents was a bit grainy of texture – not only was it caramelised, but cristallised as well. As with honey, heating will cure that.

So – with the parents over, I went all out and made a lovely caramel variation on the milk pies I did last year. It’s a bit time-consuming, with a lot of waiting in between, but that’s no problem at all with my mother who enjoys cooking and baking just as much as I do.

A crust from scratch

Prepare the pie tin with a bit of margarine and line it with baking parchment. Then go for the crust. All my foreign cookbooks speak of convenient unbaked pie crusts from the supermarket. Well, no such stuff here… so it’s the hard way for us then.
Prepare a pastry dough with the ingredients listed for the crust; line the pie tin with it and trim the edges. Prick the pastry with a fork and line the inside again with baking parchment. Put dry beans on top of that. Blind-bake this in a pre-heated oven at 175°C for 10 minutes. Remove the beans (hot!) and peel off the parchment. Then bake for some 5 minutes more to dry it. Set aside, and go make the filling!

Filling

Just mix up the ingredients; it’sa good idea to melt the butter beforehand, but make sure it’s cooled off before combining with the eggs. There’s no need to whisk the egg yolks.

Baking, adding the topping

Bake in a pre-heated oven, 175°C, for about 40 minutes. It will rise, but it won’t remain that way. You could cover it with tin foil for the last 10 minutes, to prevent the crust from getting too brown later on. Leave to cool completely – about an hour in the fridge will do – then whip up the merengue topping, spoon on top of the pie, and make peaks in the merengue with the back of the spoon. Put this in the oven again for about 12 to 15 minutes – and keep an eye on the level of browning. The peaks should be nicely browned but the rest still lovely soft & gooey inside.