Another Christmas tradition all wrapped up in a bow

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caramels, postaday2015, presents

   
   
I made my Christmas time caramels au beurre sale yesterday, as tradition warrants, I make them for my family, my husband’s colleagues and my friends. Today I spent quite a bit of time cutting the caramels into bite size pieces and wrapping them in parchment paper. 

I learned something new this time around, while I was waiting for the caramels to set up in the refrigerator, I was nervous that I had let them cook too long, I had burned my finger accidently when I poured the hot cream into the boiling sugar and so it made stirring and monitoring the caramel difficult. When I tried to unmold the caramel from my glass loaf pan, it wouldn’t budge, it was a pretty hard piece of caramel candy and that is when inspiration burst in my head. I filled a saucepan with water and lowered the loaf pan with the caramel in the simmering water, wouldn’t you know it, the caramel softened right out of the loaf pan. I put the caramel back in the refrigerator so that I could take of it today, getting it ready for present giving during the holiday season.

I grabbed some empty jars, my holiday themed wired ribbon and some tissue paper and tried to create something festive, I think the jars look nice. I really enjoy making goodies as presents instead of buying something from the store.. It feeds my creativity and it keeps me occupied.

   
 

One of my go to Christmas presents

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caramels, Christmas presents, postaday2013, salt

One of my closest friends, Mary, introduced me to Fleur de Sel caramels, Fleur de Sel is the first harvest of sea salt out of the tidal pools in Brittany, France. In France these caramels and the concept of bringing sweet and salty together have been around for a long time, but not in the crazy, hyped up way they currently are right now. These caramels were local to the Brittany and Normandy regions of France. Now we can find them anywhere. When my friend told me about her appreciation for these caramels and the special trip that she used to make to Canada to find them, I decided to try to make them myself and it has become a tradition ever since.

So yesterday right before I started to making cookies, I made the caramels. It isn’t hard, just tricky because you are dealing with molten sugar. In one saucepan, you bring heavy cream, butter and 1 teaspoon of Fleur de Sel salt (actually I didn’t have any, so I used my special batch of Sel de Rose) and in another saucepan, bring a little water, cane sugar and corn syrup to a boil until it becomes a golden color and the cream mixture is poured into the boiling sugar. Here is where it gets tricky, it froths up violently so with a wooden spoon, mix it down to an active manageable boil, keep stirring with a candy thermometer until you get to 248 degrees, it will take about 10 minutes or so. Tricky is still the operative word because if you let it go hotter, the caramel will becomes a hard caramel instead of the chewable caramel that it should be. I was successful this time, one year I had to make it three times over, that was a nuisance. Anyway, once the caramel mixture was poured into the glass loaf pan lined with parchment paper, into the refrigerator it went to cool off and set for at least two hours. Last night I cut up the caramels, dipped them in Rose petal imbued salt crystals, and wrapped them in parchment paper. My friend’s Christmas present is all set and I have extra for the babies to enjoy as well.

Homemade Christmas presents

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caramels, Christmas, gift giving, homemade, postaday2012, presents, sea salt

I ended up making three batches of caramels au Fleur de sel or caramels with sea salt. Why? I’ll tell you; the first batch came out fine, or so I thought, the color was good and the candy thermometer registered around 148 but when I took them out of the refrigerator they weren’t the soft, creamy consistency I was looking for; they had gone to the hard ball stage, which meant I let them get one or two degree’s too hot. The baby girl tried them and let me know that they tasted excellent but since they were destined for my hubby’s Christmas office presents, this was not acceptable.

Back to the drawing board I went. We had to go out shopping to replenish my heavy cream and sugar reserves and we went into T.J. Maxx before getting the cream and sugar because there were five things that we wanted to pick up for Christmas presents. Do you think that we emerged from T.J Maxx with just five items? No, we didn’t, it’s hard to go through a T.J. Maxx without saying ” oh, this is nice, oh this would be a good stocking stuffer, oh my sister would like this” you say that often enough your shopping cart gets full quickly and before you know it, you are spending far more than you had intended. No matter, more Christmas shopping was taken care of today so that is less shopping that would have been done closer to Christmas.

When we got back home, I made two new batches and hooray! They both came out the right color; the light golden caramel color and the right creamy consistency. The baby girl had to do her duty and taste this latest batch and it passed her high standards. My hubby and I spent quite some time together wrapping the caramels in parchment paper after I had cut them up into bite sized pieces and sprinkled them with Himalayan sea salt as a garnish. It took some time because there were so many. I hope that they will be a hit with his colleagues and their wives.

I’ll give away the hard candy caramels as gifts for the holidays as well, to my friends because they are really good with that salty hint that gets your taste buds toward the end, when the candy melts in your mouth. They have had the soft, creamy caramels before, so I’m sure that they won’t mind a change of pace in the consistency, they are still caramely good.

Homemade candies

Tags

caramels, fleur de sel caramels, homemade candies, postaday2012

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When the baby girl came home on Friday, she asked if we could make Fleur de sel caramels together so she could bring them back with her to school. After we came back from the vet’s Saturday afternoon, I asked her to read the recipe and assemble all the ingredients. Fleur de sel is French sea salt that is raked by hand on the coasts of Brittany and Normandy from the small tidal pools after they have evaporated. The sea salt creates the perfect foil to the caramels sweetness and rich creaminess. The other ingredients are heavy cream, light corn syrup, butter, sugar and water.

In one pan you combine the heavy cream, butter and sea salt until it just comes to a boil. The sugar, water and light corn syrup go in another pan until the sugar dissolves and the color becomes golden caramel. At this moment you pour the cream mixture into the sugar mixture and don’t panic when it erupts into a roiling bubbling concoction. Stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until a candy thermometer registers 248 degrees and you are ready to pour the caramels into a parchment lined pan. The hot caramel goes into the refridgerator for at least four hours, I prefer overnight, when it is ready to be cut up into pieces, I sprinkle some more Fleur de sel over the pieces before wrapping them up in parchment paper.

The baby girl and I had a nice time making these caramels together, it helped take our minds off from the passing of Rex for a few hours. I had a lovely time showing my daughter how to make something that can be a little tricky the first time, showing her the things to look for when judging the heat and the color of the cooked sugar, because that is what caramel is, simply cooked sugar.

I wanted to try to make sure that I taught the most important lesson in cooking with hot sugar, respect the burning capabilities of the sugar. I have scars on my hands from hasty gestures and not paying attention completely on the task at hand. When hot sugar hits your skin it doesn’t roll off, it clings to your skin, burning it until you get ice water on it. I made sure to make that very clear to my daughter. The rest of the pitfalls are just small mistakes that come with learning the art of candy making. The caramel comes out to dark, it doesn’t set right, the caramel is too hard, these mistakes come with the territory and as long as pain isn’t involved, it is a natural learning progression.