You can now purchase my handmade candy bars and marshmallows at http://www.bonbonbar.com/

It takes a certain kind of mood to want to play with boiling sugar, and today, I was there. I followed this Epicurious recipe for fleur de sel caramels to the letter, and they turned out perfectly chewy and tasty. So… yeah….. Very easy as long as you have a candy thermometer.

Given the access to exotic salts at the Dean & Deluca in St. Helena, I might want to play around with, say, chardonnay smoked salt or Hawaiian clay salt to see how the flavor would turn out. I might sprinkle some grains on the current batch, but the amount of salt in this recipe is just perfect, so I may just not mess with it.

Edit: I liked this recipe so much that I adapted it for the Single Malt Scotch Candy Bars and Orange Candy Bars that I make by hand myself.  I replaced the Karo corn syrup with glucose so that they don’t contain high-fructose corn syrup.

Fleur de Sel Caramels

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 5 tbs unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 tsp fleur de sel
• 1.5 cups (300 grams) sugar
• 1/4 c corn syrup
• 1/4 c water

Line bottom and sides of an 8″ square pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment.

Bring butter, cream, and salt to boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.

Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in 3-4 quart saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.
Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up) and simmer stirring frequently, until caramel registers 248 on a thermometer, 10-15 mins. Pour into baking pan and cool 2 hours. Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each in 4 inch square of wax paper, twisting 2 ends to close.

Makes about 40 candies.

Gourmet 2004

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Highly Recommended, Recipes - Dessert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.