Salted Caramels

**My cookie spatula giveaway ends tonight at midnight! Don’t forget to enter :) **

To make your Wednesday a little brighter, here are a few hilarious things I have stumbled upon on the internet recently:

Check out these Awkward Family Photo's ! Pinterest is an amazing thing. Especially for shenanigans like this –  and the photo descriptions make them that much funnier! (want more? Search for Awkward Family Photo’s on Pinterest)

I feel like someone followed me around with a camera for a week and recorded all of the dumb shit I say. I  am pretty sure I say all of these on a regular basis… Lance, care to confirm?

That is so mean…yet so funny, the PB & J sandwich girl is the funniest. However – His Halloween candy one was waaay funnier

This post from the Bloggess is pretty hysterical (however, I have never laughed as hard as I did when I read this post…I STILL laugh each time I read it). But then again her entire blog is amusing – perfect place to drop by and read if you’re having a bad day or if you just want to laugh so hard that you snort (not that I’ve done that…)

I hope that made your day (or at least made you laugh!). Now onto the worlds most delicious caramels!

These things are dangerous, eat just one and you’ll be hooked – I had to get as many of them out of my house as possible so that I didn’t eat the entire batch by myself in one sitting. I make them each year for my holiday gift packages and I think they are usually the favorite thing in the box! And recently, there was a much ado about them on twitter as well

The caramel is sweet and buttery, and the fleur de sel gives it just the right amount of saltiness. The fleur de sel is a really important ingredient here – don’t skimp on the quality (aka don’t use plain old sea salt).

In a nutshell Fleur de Sel is a type of salt, that is harvested (by hand, in some cases) by scraping off the layer of salt that remains on the surface of the salt harvesting pans, before it sinks to the bottom. It has a much different texture than ordinary salt and dissolves much more quickly. It is also a bit more pricey then your average salt (okay..so probably like 100x the cost) but well worth it. I reserve mine for special dishes that call for it versus my every day cooking. I found my current jar at whole foods (and it came with this adorable mini wooden spoon to scoop it), but I would assume that many other specialty food stores will carry it.

A few words of caution: When making the caramels I recommend watching the thermometer very carefully, one second its at 200 degrees then you blink and its at 245. Also – this recipe fills up an entire large pot of the stove so do not double this recipe, I can assure you it will end in disaster and probably caramel all over your stove (and possibly you). I tried this last year and the pan almost boiled over, but it was salvaged by quickly pouring half into a second pot – and I almost burnt my hand off in the process. The recipe makes well over 100 caramels but if you want more than that, just whip up a second batch.

Salted Caramels

Printable Recipe

 

Ingredients:

2 cups whipping cream

1 cup milk

2 cups brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/3 cup light corn syrup

pinch of salt
11 tablespoons butter, cut into 1 tablespoon chunks

2 teaspoons vanilla

fleur de sel for sprinkling

 

Directions:

Line a 13x9 inch baking pan with foil and spray liberally with cooking spray (or use Reynolds Non-stick foil).

 

Mix milk and cream together and set aside.

 

Add sugars, syrup, and salt to a heavy bottomed pot, stirring until mixture comes to a boil over medium-high heat.  When boiling hard, add butter chunks slowly.  Then, add milk and cream mixture to sugar mixture very slowly so that the pan mixture never stops boiling.  Add in the vanilla.

 

Cook, stirring almost continuously (as can burn easily), to firm ball stage (245F) on candy thermometer.  It takes about 20-30 minutes of stirring. Make sure the bottom of the thermometer is in the mixture but not touching the bottom of the pan.

 

Once at firm ball stage, pour into greased pan and cool for 5 minutes. Then, sprinkle the caramel pan with fleur de sel. Once sprinkled, you can put the pan in the fridge to harden further.

 

Once hardened, lift the whole piece of candy out onto a cutting board peel off the foil backing and cut into bite sized rectangles. As the caramel comes to room temperature it softens and sticks to the knife, so work quickly when cutting.

 

Wrap the caramels in cut wax paper rectangles and twist ends to close.

 

Recipe from Blue-Eyed Bakers