Here's another wonderfully easy candy recipe for the holidays - salt caramels! Here's the recipe, along with links to great ideas for pretty wrapping and packaging.
Ingredients
* 1 cup heavy cream
* 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
* 2 teaspoons sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling on top. Sea salt is found in specialty food stores under the name "fleur de sel." You can also experiment with artisanal salts if you like.
* 1 1/2 cups sugar
* 1/4 cup light corn syrup
* 1/4 cup water
Equipment
* 8" square baking pan
* Parchment paper
* Candy thermometer (or a deep-fat thermometer)
* Wax paper for wrapping or paper candy cups
Yield: About 40 caramels.
Directions
* Line the bottom and sides of the pan with parchment paper and lightly oil the paper.
* Bring the cream, butter and sea salt to a boil in a small saucepan; remove from heat and set aside.
* Boil the sugar, corn syrup, and water in a heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan; then cook without stirring until the mixture reaches 248°F, the firm-ball stage.
* Carefully stir in the cream mixture—the mixture will bubble up. Simmer, stirring frequently, about 15 minutes. The temperature should not go higher than 250°F.
* CANDYMAKER TIP: To get the caramel consistency you want, test by dropping a spoonful of caramel into a bowl of cold water. It will form a ball, which you can test with your fingers. Stop cooking when the ball is the consistency that you want.
* Pour the mixture into the baking pan and cool 2 hours.
* OPTIONAL: You can enrobe your caramels in tempered melted chocolate; sprinkle the top with some grains of sea salt (pretty salts make a difference); or press in some culinary lavender buds.
* Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper, folding ends or twisting to close like taffy.
* ALTERNATIVE: Pour the caramel into individual candy cups.
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Ginger Cinnamon Caramels
DIY Peppermint Patties
Candy-Making Basics: Do You Use Wood or Metal Spoons?
Un-Gift Guide 2007: Wrapping Homemade Candy
Candy-Making Basics: How to Work with Sugar
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Comments (24)
Mmmmm.... caramels
I just made a batch using sweetened condensed milk instead of the milk/corn syrup. I'll have to give this variant a try.
I love salted caramels **swoon**.
The Daring Baker's task last month included Alice Medrich's caramel recipe and I topped mine with Cyprus flaked salt and Salish smoked salt. So. Damn. Good.
You can see my handiwork here if you need even more 'eye candy': http://danamccauley.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/daring-bakers-amber-adventures
I love the Sea Salt Caramels from Boule and can't wait to try these. They look much easier to make than the torrone I attempted last year.
I am going to do this in the next few days. I love caramel but am allergic to cane sugar so most make me sick. I can easily sub in beet sugar or crystaline fructose in this recipe. Yippee!!! I love caramels!!!
Spare me. Those look divine. Forget making them during the holidays. New Year, Valentines, St. Patty's- those all sound like caramel holidays to me.
And maybe this question could be answered- what is with the salted caramel trend. I keep seeing a lot of recipe with salted caramel something.
how long do these keep? how far in advance can you make them before giving as a gift?
s and the r: most of my candymaking books say that homemade caramels stored in an airtight container will keep for about two weeks at room temperature.
I've made mine at least a week in advance without noticing any loss of quality. I store them in cookie tins, with sheets of wax paper between layers.
where is the picture of these shown in individual candy cups? I'd like to see! (ALTERNATIVE: Pour the caramel into individual candy cups, as shown above)
made these last night and they turned out... divine. and this was my very first caramel-making attempt, so WOW! i'm wanting to dip a batch in chocolate--should i just melt bittersweet chocolate and dip each piece in, or will that melt the caramel? (i'm assuming that's the reference to 'tempered melted chocolate'?)
Funny, I just made a different recipe of caramels last night, then saw this today! I made them very plain, and will gift them with three different flavored salts. I'll include instructions to try the caramels with the different flavors of salt - paprika/cumin, lavender/rosemary/thyme, and garam masala. I'm excited to try them tonight!
These look great - and Dana your caramels look heavenly too!!
I am looking for a caramel recipe that doesn't use corn syrup - I'm allergic! Any variants out there? I did see the sweetened condensed milk, but what else does the milk replace and in what proportions?
Di from magickalrealism: I have seen recipes that use agave syrup instead of corn syrup, they say that is is a more milky color and never really gets 'clear'. I haven't tried yet but am hoping to soon. Good luck.
Just wanted to tell others interested in trying the olive oil lemon cake that it was such a hit at a friends Hanukkah
dinner, I am making it my standard.
I also made the peppermint patties and made a whole lot of people real happy. I left out the shortening and nothing bad happen when tempering the chocolate.
Di- here comes the science
Mixing the sugar with water dissolves it- but only so much sugar can be dissolved normally. (Ever add too much sugar to iced tea and have a bunch of crystals sitting at the bottom of the glass?). Adding heat means a lot more sugar can be dissolved in the water than usual. Heating the sugar with water breaks down the crystalline structure of the sugar, which resembles a cube. When heated, the cube breaks down, and if even one tiny crystal of sugar is introduced after the crystals have started to dissolve, the sugar will "catch on" to what you're doing and stabilize and re-form in to crystals. If you do this intentionally, you can make Rock Candy.
A lot of caramel recipes strongly advise against stirring for just these reasons- if crystals stick to the edge of the pan, stirring will reintroduce them and your caramel with stabilize.
However, most sugars are not the same crystalline form. Sucrose, what we refer to as "sugar" or "refined sugar", is different from other forms of syrup. By introducing another form of sugar- say, Fructose (made from fruits and vegetables like corn and agave), the sucrose is less likely to recrystalize, because the Fructose bonds with the Sucrose, keeping it in its unstable form.
However, you can make caramel without fructose! You can use all sugar! It's just more fickle.
When making all sugar caramel, you can stir while the sugar is dissolving, just make sure to use a pastry brush dipped in water to brush the sides of the pan, to make sure any crystals sticking to the sides are reintroduced to the solution before total dissolving has occured. Once most of the crystals (as in, less than a teaspoon) are dissolved, stop stirring. Just let it do it's thing and watch as is turns yellow, amber, brown. When you do a drop-test (dropping it into the water), carefully lift the syrup from the middle of the pan and hold a paper towel under it to keep from dripping. A candy thermometer in the pan will be very helpful to know when you've reached the right temperature.
If something goes wrong anyway, add a bit more water and start from the beginning. I have also heard that adding lemon juice will prevent crystallization, but I haven't tried it.
Credit where credit's due- most of this I learned from my 11th grade chem teacher, and the wonderful Alton Brown, who has a lovely episode on the subject.
Also- can't wait to try this recipe. I received salted caramel truffles this Christmas and have been drooling for something similar ever since!
I made these today, and I just tasted the first one (it was hard to wait for them to cool!). Divine. Best caramel I have ever tasted. Very appreciative for the recipe!
I just made these and they turned out more like hard candy, but they melt in my mouth. Is this what they're supposed to be like?
Christ, what a freaking disaster.
1. Don't go to firm ball, you'll end up with hard candy like jenniferh and I.
2. Careful with the heat! This recipe does a TERRIBLE job of instructing you how to manager the heat throughout this recipe. I damn near lost my pan to this freaking recipe.
3. Apparently oiled parchment paper is still not enough to separate this stuff from whatever pan you cool it in.
"Wonderfully easy" my ass.
The pan is cooling right now, but I tested a bit of the candy in the fridge and it turned out fine. The recipe was easy enough for even a caramel noob like me to follow and it's delicious, very buttery. I just took my time bringing the temp up (should be common sense) and once it hit 248º I added the cream, heated it up again, and kept an eye on it.
Can't wait to share the caramels with folks :)
I made 2 batches of this recipe this past weekend and they turned out GREAT! I was a little confused on the "simmer for 15 minutes" as "simmer" to me means "low". After 12 minutes on low I realized that it really wasn't cooking it at a high enough heat to make it the "firm ball stage." So turned up the heat and cooked it for about 12 minutes keeping it around the 240-248 degrees (about medium high heat), never going over 250 and the texture turned out just right.
My only questions is: my caramels were really light in color. Not as dark as the picture or other caramels I've seen. I've seen some recipes that call for brown sugar so I'm thinking that is what makes it dark? Or should I have cooked it longer to darken the color? I was worried about cooking it too long and having the candies come out too hard.
This was my first time making any candy so I was very pleased with this recipe. I also made the peppermint patties from this site and was very pleased with how easy they were to make as well.
Do you think this would work with GOLDEN corn syrup? How is it different from light?
These are WAY better covered in chocolate with the salt on top!!!! Trust me!
I've never heard of golden CORN syrup, but have heard of and used golden (cane) syrup when making caramels. When I ran out of golden syrup, I used maple and molasses in it's place, which is probably what I'll be trying with this recipe, since I am not a fan of corn syrup.
just made these and they turned out wonderfully. i'm hoping that wrapped individually they will ship well, has anyone had any experience with shipping these?