Every afternoon when we have guests, we offer a home made ice cream - different flavor each day. Rather than cooking up a pudding on the stove first to make the base for the ice cream, I've found that canned sweetened condensed milk is a great "short cut"-substitute for the cooked base. This saves me the cooking time, as well as the chilling time for the hot mixture before it can do to the ice cream freezer/churn, and don't forget about the clean up that I don't have to do! We get high marks from our guests for our ice cream and some of the unique flavors, such as Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream. Therefore, I don't feel that by using this shortcut that I've compromised any quality or flavor. It's just something that makes life easier...like the Pillsbury frozen biscuits. I can make bread, but I can't make a decent biscuit from scratch to save my life!.