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by Calley Hastings
Fat Toad Farm
People often ask us how many calories are in our goat milk caramel. My answer is none. Which is a complete and total lie, but I figure if you’re going to eat it you probably don’t want to know the exact number of calories in it. What you might want to know instead is that the caramel is made from fresh goat milk produced on my family’s small farm in Brookfield. We take care of a goat herd of 50 fiercely independent and utterly adorable goats. We milk 22 does and have a family of babies, bucks, and teenagers who complete the herd. Our goats spend the winter months lounging around in a retrofitted greenhouse. The summer months are, of course, spent out on pasture and browse walks.
How this all came to be confounds me every day. We started off innocently with a few chickens, then added goats to the mix to supply the family with farm-fresh milk. Though goats produce significantly less milk than cows, they still produced more than we could drink. What do you do with extra milk? Make cheese of course! We started making all the likely suspects in our kitchen: mozzarella, fresh chevre, fromage blanc, feta, and cottage cheese. Then my sister Josey came home from Mexico, where she lives part time, with a recipe for cajeta (goat milk caramel). Like most people in the States, we had no idea what that was, but since we began making it I have grown to love caramel on just about everything.
Following is one of my favorite dessert recipes. It uses both our chevre and caramel to make a rich chocolate brownie. The slight tanginess of the chevre offsets the sweetness of the caramel and the chocolate.
Fat Toad Farm is a small family–run goat dairy in Brookfield. The family—Steve Reid, Judith Irving, Calley Hastings, and Josey Hastings—all fill various roles on the farm and in the production room. They make five flavors of fresh chevre (plain, maple, ginger cilantro sesame, sundried tomato basil, and olive) and four flavors of goat milk caramel (original, vanilla bean, coffee bean, and cinnamon). Visit www.fattoadfarm.com for more recipes and information, or call 802–279–0098.
Brownie base
6 Tbs unsalted butter
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
Goat cheese filling
1 1/2 cups plain chevre
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg yolk
Caramel Swirl
4–6 ounces of goat milk caramel (original, vanilla bean and coffee bean recommended)
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Grease an 8 x 8 pan.
To make brownies, melt butter and chopped up chocolate in a double boiler. Heat until melted and combined. Take off heat and add sugar and vanilla. Let cool slightly. Whisk in eggs one at a time. Whisk the dry ingredients together—flour, salt, and baking powder. Combine with wet ingredients until fully incorporated.
To make goat cheese filling, cream together all filling ingredients with a blender or spoon.
Pour half of batter into bottom of pan. Using a spoon, spread half of the goat cheese on top of batter. Pour the remaining batter on top. Drop the rest of the goat cheese on top and swirl in with a knife. Drizzle caramel on top.
Bake for 50–60 minutes.
