My Tidy Kitchen

Caramels

28th December, 2009 - Posted by Emily - Comments

I’m starting off the Christmas Cookie series with my favorite creation from this year – caramels! They were fairly easy to make and so delicious. I made them with my friend, Christina, and we actually cut the batch in half (then each took half the batch) so I think if you made the whole recipe, you just might be wrapping up the caramels until New Year’s Eve! You’ll need a candy thermometer and a whole lot of heavy cream for this recipe.

Golden Caramels
from Martha Stewart, makes 150

• 4 cups heavy cream
  1 cup sweetened condensed milk
  4 cups light corn syrup
  4 cups sugar
  1 teaspoon salt
  1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces
  1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  Vegetable-oil cooking spray

1. Spray a half-sheet pan with cooking spray, then line with parchment or wax paper overlapping on two ends, and spray that with cooking spray. Set aside in a spot where it will not be moved. In a 2-quart saucepan, combine cream and sweetened condensed milk; set aside.
2. In a heavy 6- to 8-quart saucepan, combine corn syrup, 1 cup water, sugar, and salt. Clip on candy thermometer. Over high heat, cook until sugar is dissolved, stirring with a wooden spoon, 8 to 12 minutes. Brush down sides of pan with a pastry brush dipped in water to remove any sugar crystals.
3. Stop stirring, reduce heat to medium, and bring to a boil. Cook, without stirring, until temperature reaches 250 degrees (hard-ball stage), about 45 to 60 minutes (it didn’t take this long for us, but we did cut the batch in half). Meanwhile, cook cream mixture over low heat until it is just warm. Do not boil. When sugar reaches 250 degrees. slowly stir in butter and warmed cream mixture, keeping mixture boiling at all times (be careful – it bubbles up!). Stirring constantly, cook over medium heat until thermometer reaches 244 degrees (firm-ball stage), 55 to 75 minutes (again, it didn’t take ours this long to get to 244 degrees). In order to prevent burned parts from making it into the candies, you have two options: 1) make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan while you stir, or 2) make sure you don’t scrape the bottom at all. Stir in vanilla. Immediately pour into prepared pan without scraping pot. Let stand uncovered at room temperature for 24 hours without moving. Our set in less than 24 hours but I left them for that long, just to be on the safe side.
4. To cut, spray a large cutting board generously with cooking spray. Grasping the overhanging parchment paper, unmold caramel from pan onto sprayed surface. Cut into 1-by-1 1/4-inch pieces, or other shapes. Wrap each in cellophane or waxed paper. I used a large pizza cutter to make the initial cuts, then a metal pastry cutter to cut any pieces that didn’t get cut all the way through.

Yep, there’s a piece missing. I needed to test them out!