sea salted caramels

Friends, I admit.  It's taking me WAYYY too long to complete my "Food Network Recipe Box" challenge.  Although this recipe isn't from my recipe box, it's still from Food Network so we're going to pretend like this puts me one step closer to completing my challenge.  I made these morsels of goodness for my precious, precious friend in my MSW program, Melissa.  I took pictures along the way since caramels can be a little tricky to make.  Melissa said she licked the wrappers clean and I've been craving these guys ever since making them.  They are worth it to make for any kind of birthday where you don't know what to get the person (ie; your father in law who has everything he needs so what REALLY can you get him?  food always wins), or any kind of occasion, really, but I warn you: to wrap them individually and work that caramel is time consuming so keep that in mind.

Ina says it yields 16 caramels- but I think you can go for a few more depending on the size you cut them.


Ingredients:

• Vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon fine fleur de sel, plus extra for sprinkling (I just used my sea salt- much easier to find!)
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

• Prep the pan:   Line an 8-inch-square baking pan with parchment paper, allowing it to drape over 2 sides, then brush the paper lightly with oil. (note: ANYTHING the caramel is going to touch you need to brush or spray with oil- YOU HEAR ME ON THAT?  I PROMISE IT WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER!)

sorry for the awkward picture, but here's what you're doing:

• In a deep saucepan combine 1/4 cup water, the sugar and corn syrup and bring them to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil until the mixture is a warm golden brown. Don't stir -- just swirl the pan.

• meanwhile, the pot in the back is for the purpose of doing this: 

• In a small pot, bring the cream, butter and 1 teaspoon of fleur de sel to a simmer over medium heat. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Your sugar mixture will start looking like this:

then this:

• once your sugar mixture (caramel) has reached this gorgeous, rich deep color, you add the cream mixture.  CAREFUL/CUIDADO!  It will bubble up "violently" as Ina says.

• stir in your vanilla with a wooden spoon and cook over medium low heat for around 10 minutes, until the mixture reaches 248 degrees (firm ball) on a candy thermometer (it will look like this:)

• now pour your hot caramel into your prepared dish and refrigerate for several hours- I mean SEVERAL.  I think I may have used too deep of a dish, causing the caramel to be SUPER thick in width (which is fine, and still yields the same delicious results, just a little more difficult to work with) so yeah yeah, Ina says to use an 8x8, but I think you could get away with something that will make the caramel spread out a bit more- you feel me on that?  

• So, after your caramel has refrigerated, it's ready to be cut.  This is how Ina says to do it (because I am no where near smart enough to try and tell you how):

• Sprinkle the log with fleur de sel, trim the ends and cut into 8 pieces. (Start by cutting the log in half, then continue cutting each piece in half until you have 8 equal pieces.) It's easier to cut the caramels if you brush the knife with flavorless oil like corn oil.  Here's how mine looked if it helps:

 this is half a log- I cut it straight down the middle length wise- "hot dog" style, if you will

From here, I manipulated the caramel and plopped it on a square of wax paper I had cut out like so:

I then wrapped the little treasures up to look like this (per Ina's instructions- I am not creative enough to think of this!):

There you have it.  OUT OF THIS WORLD CARAMELS!!!

Click here for full recipe

Make these as SOON as you can!! They are SO worth the labor- especially if you are trying to impress somebody! (like your father in law!)