Caramels, Page 153, 2nd Column, 1st Recipe

At the same time when I was doing the Vanilla Crisps I decided to dive into the Candy chapter of the book.

I used to make a candy from this cookbook regularly when I was in my teens called Divinity, but that was the extent of my candy making and had been more than 30 years ago.  But I had been paging through the Candy chapter and decided I’d like to try out stuff there too.  Caramels appealed, they seemed pretty simple, I like caramels, and had never had homemade ones.

As it turns out allrecipes.com has something very close: Chewy Caramels

So I wrote up my shopping list, I figured since it called for one pound of brown sugar, I’d just buy a fresh box and use that instead of dipping into my usual baking supply.  I also needed light corn syrup and sweetened condensed milk.  The recipe I was using called for a 15 oz. can of that and I dutifully added that to my shopping list.  This would lead to an “Oh, this is what happens when you use a 35 year old recipe book” moment.

At the grocery store everything is going well until I get to the sweetened condensed milk and lo and behold, the containers are only 14 oz!  This being a candy recipe I was not confident about using that one ounce less and bought two cans.  Looking at the slightly different allrecipes.com version, it would probably be fine to use just 14 oz, but I just wasn’t sure at the time.

As it turns out I already had a candy thermometer, but I had to use a larger pan than the 3 quart pan that was recommended.  I melted the butter then added in everything else except the vanilla and started raising the temperature of the mix, stirring constantly with the thermometer clipped to the side of the pan.

This was time consuming, and I fretted about the height of the flames and burning the mixture.  I imagine I’ll get more used to this after trying other candy recipes.  The worst part was with my combination of being nearsighted and farsighted I could not read the thermometer from more than a few inches away.  I had to take off my glasses, lean over the pot and try to read it.  I kept thinking one inopportune splash could be really bad.  I felt like I should be wearing safety glasses.

Finally after what seemed like a very long time and lots of stirring (my hand got tired!) the mixture reached the recommended temperature.  I removed it from the fire, added the vanilla and stirred it in and then poured into the buttered Pyrex pan I had ready.

Now to let it cool.  I salvaged some of the remainder from the pot and gave it a taste, and oh goodness, it tasted great.  Buttery and with a flavor I think of as distinct to caramels (and perhaps attributed to my use of dark brown sugar), very good.  But as it turns out, they didn’t quite turn out as they should have.

Although what was salvaged from the pot firmed up nicely, what I had poured in the Pyrex dish never became as firm.  It was still firm enough to cut into caramels, but it would lose shape after a bit, they were softer than they should have been.  Still delicious, but too soft.  My guess is that the thermometer was not registering the temperature properly.  I had skipped a crucial step, calibrating the thermometer, and I hadn’t done the cold water test either. One of a few lessons learned for the next try.

Lessons Learned:

Calibrate the thermometer and adjust accordingly for any future candy making.

Use the cold water test as a second measure of readiness.

Use the right size pot, I suspect that because the mixture was not that deep in the pot, it was more difficult to keep the thermometer in a position where it wasn’t too close to the bottom.  That would cause it to register as hotter than it was.

Try the recipe with just a 14 oz container of sweetened condensed milk.  It will probably be fine, but it would be nice to do a taste comparison.

Find a way to put something into the pan you pour the caramels to set in to make it easier to get them out later.  Maybe aluminum foil?