See Also: Candies · Cooking Club
Caramels
From Dorothy McNett's recipes at www.dorothymcnett.com. The heavier the cream, the smoother and richer the caramels will be. You will need to have a candy thermometer so that your cooking time will be more accurate. Even then, sometimes you will have "soft caramels" and other times "hard caramels". Great served with apple slices.
1 cup raw sugar
3/4 cup corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 cups half and half, or heavy cream, or a combo of each
apple slices, for serving, if desired (persimmon slices as well!)
Butter a 8 by 8 inch baking pan and set it aside. In a heavy bottomed 2-3 quart saucepan combine sugar, corn syrup, salt and 1/2 cup of the cream. Bring to a boil, reduce to medium heat and stir with a silicone spatula gently without splashing the mixture up onto the sides of the pan. Stir gently and constantly. When it reaches about 230 degrees on your candy thermometer, stir in the remaining 1 cup of cream. Continue to cook on medium heat, stirring constantly without splashing. When the mixture begins to thicken and turns a bit darker in color (may take about 10-15 minutes to get to this stage) and it has reached 240-245 degrees on the thermometer, remove from heat and pour quickly into the buttered pan. Do not scrape the pan nor stir the caramel mixture, just let it seek its own level. Allow to cool about 2 hours without disturbing. Invert onto cutting board (you may have to cut and nudge it a bit to get it out) and then cut into pieces with a thin sharp knife. Wrap individual pieces with waxed paper unless you eat all of them right now!
Recipe created 2011-11-27.
