I had thoughts of entering this into the Holiday Sweets throwdown, but since it's not cooked on a grill or smoker it won't count. I'll post the cook thread anyway.
Recipe is from a Thermoworks blog I grabbed years ago. Somewhat time consuming as the final stage needs constant stirring, but well worth the effort. Some years I've made four or five batches and once in a while will dip the caramels in chocolate. I don't have the energy this year to be making that many batches. I've also made peanut brittle which is similar in nature, but won't have the time to do so this week.
The ingredients -
Step 1. Mix together the heavy cream, butter, vanilla and salt. The recipe calls for vanilla bean which I normally use. But vanilla beans have become more difficult to find and are outrageously expensive. So vanilla extract will do fine.
Heat at medium, stirring occasionally. Once it comes to a boil, set aside and cover -
Step 2. Mix together the corn syrup and sugar -
Heating. No stirring of this mixture as you don't want sugar crystals to form. Needs to reach 300F at this stage -
Once it reaches 300, stovetop temp is lowered to medium-low and the mixture needs to be heated to 350F. During this time, the pot should be swirled, but still no stirring. This takes a while and the inclination is to crank the temp upwards, even though the stove's at a lower setting but in time it makes it to the desired temp.
We're at 350F.
Step 3. Mix the butter and heavy cream mixture into the sugar/corn syrup. During this stage, constant stirring is required as you don't want the caramel to burn. Final temp here is 248F. We're currently at 229, so we have a ways to go. This last step usually takes about 10 minutes of stirring starting at medium low heat.
You might ask why if the previous step ended at 350, how'd this step start at a temp around 225 or so? Lower cooking temp and the cream mixture has decreased in temp from 212. All I know is it takes a long time to make it back up to 248! Especially with the constant stirring!
Step 4. Pour into a parchment lined 8x8 pan. After a few minutes, sprinkle with sea salt -
At this point, it's sitting on the counter, cooling for an hour. Then it'll be placed into the fridge for a few hours. Once cold, I'll slice it into squares and then wrap each piece individually. I usually get 64 caramels out of each pan. I gave up on wax paper many years ago as cutting it into proper size and trying to get the individual caramels to stay wrapped after twisting was frustrating.
So I bought special candy wrappers from Amazon a few years back. 2000 count!
More pics to follow once the caramels are cooled, cut and wrapped.
Out of the fridge -
64 pieces -
And that's a wrap! -
I will say that these caramels beat anything you can buy at a grocery store and are even better than most I've picked up at candy shops.
Thanks for following along on a lunchman Christmas tradition!
Regards,
-lunchman
Recipe is from a Thermoworks blog I grabbed years ago. Somewhat time consuming as the final stage needs constant stirring, but well worth the effort. Some years I've made four or five batches and once in a while will dip the caramels in chocolate. I don't have the energy this year to be making that many batches. I've also made peanut brittle which is similar in nature, but won't have the time to do so this week.
The ingredients -
Step 1. Mix together the heavy cream, butter, vanilla and salt. The recipe calls for vanilla bean which I normally use. But vanilla beans have become more difficult to find and are outrageously expensive. So vanilla extract will do fine.
Heat at medium, stirring occasionally. Once it comes to a boil, set aside and cover -
Step 2. Mix together the corn syrup and sugar -
Heating. No stirring of this mixture as you don't want sugar crystals to form. Needs to reach 300F at this stage -
Once it reaches 300, stovetop temp is lowered to medium-low and the mixture needs to be heated to 350F. During this time, the pot should be swirled, but still no stirring. This takes a while and the inclination is to crank the temp upwards, even though the stove's at a lower setting but in time it makes it to the desired temp.
We're at 350F.
Step 3. Mix the butter and heavy cream mixture into the sugar/corn syrup. During this stage, constant stirring is required as you don't want the caramel to burn. Final temp here is 248F. We're currently at 229, so we have a ways to go. This last step usually takes about 10 minutes of stirring starting at medium low heat.
You might ask why if the previous step ended at 350, how'd this step start at a temp around 225 or so? Lower cooking temp and the cream mixture has decreased in temp from 212. All I know is it takes a long time to make it back up to 248! Especially with the constant stirring!
Step 4. Pour into a parchment lined 8x8 pan. After a few minutes, sprinkle with sea salt -
At this point, it's sitting on the counter, cooling for an hour. Then it'll be placed into the fridge for a few hours. Once cold, I'll slice it into squares and then wrap each piece individually. I usually get 64 caramels out of each pan. I gave up on wax paper many years ago as cutting it into proper size and trying to get the individual caramels to stay wrapped after twisting was frustrating.
So I bought special candy wrappers from Amazon a few years back. 2000 count!
More pics to follow once the caramels are cooled, cut and wrapped.
Out of the fridge -
64 pieces -
And that's a wrap! -
I will say that these caramels beat anything you can buy at a grocery store and are even better than most I've picked up at candy shops.
Thanks for following along on a lunchman Christmas tradition!
Regards,
-lunchman
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