Chewy Caramel Candy

Soft chewy caramel

Last week I had a lot of left over thick cream and so I wanted to find some recipes to use it up. That was I when I came across this recipe for chewy caramel from http://www.thekitchn.com. I have never made candies of any kinds before. The recipe sounds pretty straight forward and this is only an experiment to use up my left over thick cream, so why not?

Here is the recipe that I adapted from thekitchn.com:

Ingredients
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup white granulated sugar
2 tablespoon of glucose (the original recipe called for corn syrup but I didn’t have any)
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

1. Have the mold ready. Line a rectangular or square baking tray with baking paper allowing the paper to come up the sides.

2. Combine cream, butter and salt and melt over medium heat just until the butter melts. Don’t let the mixture boil.

3. Combine the sugar, glucose, and water. Preferably in a deep pan, stir together sugar, glucose and water to help dissolve the sugar and put on medium heat. Pop in the candy thermometer and watch the temperature as the sugar heats up. Do not stir anymore.

4. Cook the sugar syrup until 320°F . As the sugar start to boil, bubbles will appear and increase in number such that the whole pot seems to be covered in bubbles, which boil and turn over quite rapidly. The sugar syrup will also change from the initial cloudy to a more transparent nature. For caramel candy, you can stop boiling anywhere between 250°F and before it reaches 325°F. Note that the syrup will darken around 320°F.

5. Whisk in the cream and butter. When the sugar syrup comes to temperature, turn off the heat and whisk in the warmed cream and butter mixture. Pour slowly while whisking as this will cause a lot of bubbling and be careful of the very hot mixture.

6. Heat the caramel to 245°F – 250°F. Once all of the cream and butter mixture has been added, reheat the sugar syrup mixture over medium heat. The mixture now is yellowish and creamy in colour but soon will start to darken and caramelize. Take off the heat when temperature reaches 245°F to 250°F. Whisk in vanilla extract.

7. Quickly pour caramel into the prepared mold. Don’t scrape the bottom of the pan to get that last bit out. I made this mistake and the “last bit” formed a stiff crust on the surface of my caramel sheet. Lucky it was a small corner so I simply discarded it.

8. Let the caramel set overnight. Cut into desired size and wrap in baking paper.

Enjoy 🙂

 

Poured and set caramel

Cut them up and wrap in baking paper. Twist the ends to seal them.

Wrapping these actually took a while. I had no idea. It was good I only made a small batch! Phew!

The first candy attempt was good, I think 🙂 I ended up with soft and chewy caramel candies. I imagine I could take the caramel further for a touch more darker caramel colour and firmer texture. Next time when I run into the dilemma of having too much left over thick cream then I will try that 🙂

Besides these soft caramel candies, I also made creme brulee in order to really use up that left over thick cream. It will be in my next post!

🙂