Here’s a secret that saved my lemon bar recipe last summer: Evaporated milk is your closest friend. It’s regular milk that’s had water removed, just like condensed milk, but it hasn’t been sweetened. You can mix it with sugar and heat it to mimic the real deal.
If you have evaporated milk in your cupboard, you can make a quick substitute. Combine 1 cup of evaporated milk with 1 and ¼ cups of sugar. Heat it gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves, and let it cool. It won’t be exactly the same, but it’ll totally work in a pinch.
My Aunt Carol does this all the time for her famous pumpkin pie, and nobody ever notices. She calls it “the little white lie of baking.” I’ve adopted that phrase into my own cooking vocabulary with pride.
