PhDCupcaker

Okay… I know… I was supposed to post these on Feb 15. I actually made them before that. I even asked Josh to upload the pictures so that I could post before the Feb 15 date, but alas…. my blog post never came to fruition. I thought that after defending my dissertation I would have all the time in the world to bake and blog. Well, that was all just a huge fantasy I suppose. Anyway, so here I am… having accomplished a fair bit of schoolwork and housework, so I figured even though it is way late, I should post about those delicious caramels. Caramel has been my flavor of choice lately – I love anything caramel, particularly salted caramel. One of my favorite cupcakes of all time were those Martha Stewart Chocolate Salted Caramel Mini Cupcakes and I love that super rich Sallted Caramel Chocolate Layer Cake that I have made three times, despite it’s difficulty! So, when it came to making these soft candy caramels I was definitely in! What a great pic by by Teri of The Freshman Cook!

I have made caramels before, but for some reason I always seem to have a hard time cutting them and usually completely give up, despite having gone through all the work of actually making them. This recipe was completely different… maybe it was the soft texture, or the fact that I actually followed their directions for using some cooking spray on the knife before slicing. Whatever it was…. these were so easy to cut and wrap.

These caramels had 1 cup of light brown sugar in them. Maybe this is what made these so tasty. I don’t remember using brown sugar in the caramels I have made before… maybe I am just forgetting those disasters though! It didn’t bubble up as much as usual when I added the cream and condensed milk. I was a little worried that my thermometer wasn’t working. I haven’t had much success with recipes that required certain temperatures recently and so I have been blaming that on my thermometer, but this time… things seemed to go okay.

Once it was it was back up to 250 or so I removed it, added the vanilla and salt (oh how I love the salty-sweet combo). I think I added a little more than the requested 1 tsp.

It took all my will-power to resist just eating this with a spoon…. Now that I think of it, this might have been a good recipe to use for the scoopable caramel I tried to make around the holidays. A friend of mine had brought me some salted caramel from Paris. It came in a little jar with a spoon and boy was it tasty. It may have been the reason why I was actually able to finish my dissertation :-) I tried replicating it and it just did not work… this recipe might have worked though… Next time I am going to try it.. pour this right into a little jar and see if I can eat it with a spoon. Yum!!!! Anyway, the next morning I dumped the block out to cut it. I did have a bit of a problem getting the foil off, but it wasn’t too bad.

That big peak near the center was the result of sticking to the foil. It wasn’t too bad. Since it was Valentine’s Day I thought I might bring these to my class. I bought some red and silver wrappers and began cutting and wrapping.

My students (and colleagues) really liked these. And of course… I loved them. This recipe is definitely a keeper! Next time I think I might try to wrap these in clear wrap so you can see the caramel goodness!