This is a delicious caramel-like cream sauce called Dulce de Leche. You can eat it by itself or serve it over fruit or ice cream.
I made the frosting to use on a yellow cake (my husband's favorite birthday cake combination is yellow cake with caramel frosting--7 years in I am still working to find the right recipes for both). I followed the other reviewers' suggestions to double the caramel. The flavor was fantastic and intense. My husband liked it but thought it was super rich. I may lighten up some of the dairy ingredients next time. The icing was still fairly loose after chilling. I bet this would be amazing with the pumpkin cake. I learned this recipe at http://www.gourmandia.com and http://www.gourmetrecipe.com.These sites were amazing. They have lots of exciting and tasty recipes for you to choose from. Try visiting it! - 18 Feb 2012
Something else. Previous reviewers' frustration with this recipe is probably the fault of a certain vagueness in the directions. the liquid needs to be reduced to about half its original volume. It will foam up considerably when first reaching an active simmer, and again when the baking soda is added. After that, it will be relatively well-behaved for a while and the heat can be turned up, though constant stirring will still be needed to keep the bottom from burning. When it's nearly ready, it will suddenly get very foamy again. After that, you can keep testing small samples on a chilled plate to see how much it stiffens up; if you evaporate it too far down, you may end up with something more like soft fudge -- still perfectly edible, but perhaps not what you had in mind. I'm not sure why this recipe suggests chilling the dulce de leche *before* placing in jars, which seems like an invitation for trouble of various kinds. For a start, it's much easier to scrape it out when it's still hot. One last cleanup note-- instead of tossing the sticky pot into the sink to soak off the caramel you couldn't scrape out, pour a bit of plain milk into it and gently reheat it on the stove while stirring. Hey presto: caramel - 29 Sep 2008
This recipe is not easy to make. I stirred the mixture for over 1/2 hour at the last stage and NO thickening occurred. It never did occur for the following 1/2 hour. It sounds delicious, but I never got there. - 29 Sep 2008