Think of it as next-level dulce de leche. Colombia’s arequipe is made in a similar way – milk and sugar, stirred for a long time – but it’s thicker, richer, darker.
“It was like the daily sweet. We used arequipe all the time,” says Colombian-born Jaime Gomez Ordonez, who now runs Brisbane’s café with his wife, Miriam Taylor. “My ma used to do it in the kitchen little by little, cooking the milk, stirring and stirring the pot until it becomes a caramel. It takes a long time.”
The Macondo menu features the slow-cooked caramel in several desserts, including the obleas – the flat wafers that are sold, smothered in caramel, on street corners across Colombia.
“It’s very flat, thin, flour mixed with water, which has no taste at all, but they mix it with arequipe, which is the main ingredient, and with strawberry jam, cheese, cream, whatever, and pineapple they put sometimes, fresh cut pineapple. The base is the oblea … but it’s about the caramel, and the jam and cream and cheese,” says Gomez, who grew up in Bogota, the Colombian capital, and came to Australia in 199.
“My mum used to make it [obleas], but you can buy it anywhere so it’s not really worth it to make it yourself, you can buy it nice and crunchy on the street.”
“The arequipe, it’s not just in Colombia, it’s in Equador and Venezuela too, but Colombians pride themselves on how long they cook it,’’ say Taylor. The Colombian caramel, she says, is similar to , or Mexican , but darker, thicker and richer. As well as the cooking time - it usually takes - the other secret to a good arequipe is the sugar.
“The trick is that they add panela, which is a burnt sugar cane that is another principle of Colombian cooking. Again, it’s a very long process – all the offcuts of the sugar cane industry, at a very village, regional level, go into a crusher and then the fluid is cooked and cooked and cooked until everything is boiled down to its essence and you get this very hard, almost black sugar.”
Arequipe is used in all kinds of desserts. At Macondo, which opened 18 months ago in the Brisbane suburb of Salisbury, it appears on the with obleas, sandwiched with blackberry jam, cream and a house-made fresh white cheese; in cocadas de arequipe (oven-baked coconut and caramel balls, typical of the coastal regions of Colombia); tortilla de arequipe; milhojas (a layered pastry with custard and caramel); and pastel Gloria, a delicious crunchy golden pastry encasing caramel and guava paste, another Colombian staple.
Obleas slathered with arequipe are also one of the (man, many) things Action Bronson chows down on in the new series of F-ck That’s Delicious. In episode one, Bronson and his buddies are exploring Queens and one of the most delicious stops is at Rico Pan, a Colombian bakery, where the team eat cheesy rolls, empanadas and many sweet things; later they top up the sugar levels with arequipe wafers from a street stall. 
“It's like the ice-cream cone at the bottom...,” says one of Bronson’s eating buddies, the Alchemist. A caramel-lined waffle cone, perhaps?
Macondo's milhojas: baked puff pastry layered with arequipe, cream, custard and a drizzle of chocolate. Source: Macondo
Action Bronson stops for caramel-coated wafers from a street stall. Source: SBS Viceland / F-ck That's Delicious
If all this discussion of dark, rich caramel has sparked a craving, you can find arequipe at a few specialist Latin American suppliers, such as and , which sells panela and obleas - or head over to SBS Food's to answer your craving with kitchen DIY.
All the caramels
Homemade cajeta (Cajeta casera)
