Dulce de Leche & Apple Crisp For 2

It's no secret that I love all shows of The Bachelor franchise (The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and Bachelor Pad). For the past ten months ABC has been withholding my favorite show!!! And now finally it is airing again! For the first time ever the featured Bachelor is of Latin descent. Juan Pablo, who hailed from the last Bachelorette season, is the leading man!

Since I was finding myself particularly excited about the premiere I decided to make a Venezuelan dish to honor Juan Pablo's heritage. Well I browsed around the Internet quite a bit and decided that Venezuelan entree dishes were too hard and complicated for me! I was interested in a cornmeal pancake, called arepas, but in Venezuela they are made with a precooked, ground flour which can be only purchased in specialty stores here. And since I wanted to be authentic I passed on the arepas. So then I moved on to researching desserts! And found that dulce de leche, which is the caramelization of sweetened milk, is quite popular in Venezuela!

My loving husband watched The Bachelor with me (without bribery) so to reward his willingness to watch Juan Pablo hand out some red roses, I decided to drizzle the dulce de leche on apple crumbles which are one of his favorite crisps. Read on for both recipes!

   There are various methods for making dulce de leche; follow the hyperlink in the recipe title to read the full post on the other methods. I used the oven because I was bit pressed for time (next time I want to use the crockpot which I saw on other website).

Dulce de Leche from Bakers Royale blog
Ingredients
1 can sweetened condensed milk
Directions for oven
   Empty the contents of a can into an oven-proof dish (I used an 8x8 Pyrex dish); sprinkle with some kosher salt (forgot to do this) and tightly cover it with foil.

   Place the covered dish in a larger roasting or casserole pan and fill it up with water until it reaches three quarters of the up the covered dish to create a water bath. Bake at 425 degrees F for 60-90 minutes checking every 30 minutes on the water level and adding more as needed (my water level did not change much).

   Dulce de leche is ready when it takes on a brown and caramel-like appearance. Remove from the oven and whisk to smoothness. Let cool before storing.

Date Night Apple Crisps for Two loosely adapted from this "individual apple crisps" posts 
Ingredients
1 apple, peeled and diced small
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 c all-purpose flour
1/4 c steel cut oats
4 tbsp brown sugar
3-4 tbsp butter, melted
cinnamon / pumpkin pie spice

Directions
   Preheat oven to 375°F.
   For crisp topping: Place oats, flour, sugar, cinnamon, and brown sugar in a mixing bowl and stir together.
   For filling: Toss apples with lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (we prefer pumpkin pie spice). Split apples into two small ramekins.

   Divide crisp topping and spoon over apples. Drizzle melted butter over each ramekin.
   Place crisps onto a baking sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

   Serve with vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of dulce de leche.

Are you rooting for Bachelor Juan Pablo??