Pastillas (Milk Candy) Recipe

Good day guys!  Today's recipe is a perfect holiday gift idea.  Not only is it customizable but absolutely delicious and would be highly appreciated by your sweet-tooth friends and family members.  This recipe would only need three or four ingredients and very simple to make and if you have kids, you can make this recipe together and enjoy some quality time.  All you need is a bit of creativity to make these pretty little sweet bites.  This batch was my first attempt at making them and I would say, it was very, very successful.  I think I did a pretty good job so I want to share with you this recipe so you can make it at home too.  Want to know how to make them?

First, we need the following ingredients:
1.  Sugar
2.  Powdered milk
3.  Food coloring
4.  Condensed milk
Optional:  Artificial flavoring
Oh, we also need some chocolate chips and candy sprinkles of your choice for decoration purposes.

First step, we need to combine the powdered milk and the condensed milk.  I used a regular box of powdered milk plus a small can of condensed milk for this recipe.

Next, just mix the two together until well combined.  You can add more powdered milk or more condensed milk to adjust the mixture to the perfect consistency.  It should be very, very sticky but moldable into balls or any shape you want.  You can also add some drops of flavoring at this point.   You can use vanilla, buko pandan, strawberry, et cetera.

Now, all we need to do is to put a bit of oil or butter in our palms then get a spoonful of the mixture and start rolling it into a ball.  You can also try different shapes for variation like squares or hearts.

Now, here comes the fun part :) All we need to do is to decorate! See, it's super simple.  For this batch, I made different shapes of the pastillas.  I made round ones, squares, and even heart-shaped ones.  I then dipped some into colored sugar.  I made the colored sugar by placing three spoonfuls of regular table sugar plus one to two drops of liquid food coloring.  I just mixed those two together and I now have colored sugar :)

If you do not like the idea of icing sugar, you can roll the pastillas in candy sprinkles.  I had some leftover very colorful candy sprinkles so I just used those.

For this one, I just made pastillas balls then dipped them into regular white sugar, then added chocolate chips at the middle which you can see flattened them a bit.

The possibilities are endless for decorating these simple treat.  You can even use crushed nuts or dip them in melted chocolate.  THAT would be yum!  You can also add a surprise center, maybe a cherry or raspberry or a hazelnut inside?  Think of it as a cheap and easy version of truffles :)  All you have to do now is to let it air dry a bit, just to harden them and then place in glass or plastic containers.  Just add a ribbon on top and voila!  Instant, cheap, and easy but very thoughtful gift this Christmas.

Hope you liked and try today's recipe.  I would love to see your creations.  Post them on Facebook and tag our FB account.  Til our next DIY! :)  Have a fabulous day everyone!