Monday, July 21, 2008

Salty Caramels


Fleur de Sel is a little harder to find than I thought it would be. I found several flavors of it, but none that were just plain salt. I ended up just purchasing three different types of Hawaiian sea salt:

  • Black Lava Sea Salt
  • Red Alaea Sea Salt
  • White Sea Salt
After tasting all three, I think I'll be using a lot of the red alaea sea salt. It has a very unique flavor that I can't describe.

Well, back to the caramels. I started making these a little late, so I ended up only making the caramels, even though I wanted to dip them in chocolate.

I also should have been smarter when making these. The original recipe said it would make 24 1-inch squares...I consider myself a smart person, but I didn't catch that this was being made in an 8"x8" pan or 64 1-inch squares, and I doubled the recipe, ended up with a ton of caramels and brought them into work to share.

Onto the recipe...

Ingredients:

canola or vegetable oil for pan (I used peanut oil)
1 cup heavy whipping cream
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons fleur de sel, plus more for sprinkling (I used just plain white hawaiian sea salt)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water

Preparation:

Place a piece of parchment paper inside an 8"x8" dish and brush with the vegetable oil.

In a small saucepan, heat the cream, butter, and 2 teaspoons of the salt to a boil, and then remove from the heat and set aside.

In a 4 quart heavy saucepan, add the sugar, corn syrup, and water, stirring until the sugar dissolves. After it has dissolved, boil without stirring the pan until the mixture is a light caramel color, swirling the pan to keep it from burning.

Stir in the cream mixture that you made earlier (but be careful, it totally starts hissing and popping when you add it) and simmer, stirring frequently, until the mixture is 248 degrees on a candy thermometer

Pour into the 8"x8" pan and sprinkle with some more of the sea salt. Let the caramel cool for two hours, and then cut into 1" squares.


1 comment:

Melissa said...

yummy - they look really good. I'd like 2 with chocolate please.