While every nation in South America has a distinct culinary tradition shaped by local crops and waves of immigration, there is one element that unites them all: a serious sweet tooth.
It’s no surprise that these countries love dessert: this is, after all, where cane sugar comes from. Brazil is the world’s leading producer of the stuff, and Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru have a long history of growing sugar cane along the Pacific and Caribbean coastlines.
Where milk and sugar are staples, and sweetened condensed milk reigns supreme, nothing figures more heavily in desserts than caramel and its kin. Mexico’s sugary goat milk caramel is known as cajeta, but South America has half a dozen names for the stuff, each with slight regional variations. (A friendly bit of advice: Don’t try to ask for cajeta in Argentina, where that word is street slang for a female body part.) Dulce de leche, which translates to “milk candy” or “sweetness of milk,” is found across Argentina and Uruguay. It’s made by simmering milk, sugar, vanilla, and baking soda until the milk turns brown, thick, and gooey—or slowly heating a can of condensed milk in a pot of boiling water.
