More Cheese More Chocolate

In the last two weeks I’ve made candy four times.  The first thing I made was honeycomb, which was a completely inedible failure.  Thinking that the recipe was to blame, I tried another batch using a different recipe.  It was a mostly inedible failure, and my poor performance in mixing in the baking soda was the problem.  Round three was a great success, and I ended up with a delicious batch of salted maple caramels.  Then there was round four, which produced an edible but seriously flawed pan of toffee.  I’m not sure who is to blame for the fact that there was so much excess butter that I could pour it off of the pan, but I really want to blame someone else, especially since I wasted a cup of good chocolate chips in the process.  With my 25% success rate, I think I’ll hold off for a week or two before I attempt any more candy-making.  I will share the successful caramel attempt, though.

I’ve made caramels a couple of times before, and when I saw a recipe for caramels made with maple syrup, I knew that I had to try them. I followed the recipe almost exactly, but I left out the optional maple extract and added a sprinkling of Maldon sea salt at the end.  I also substituted Lyle’s golden syrup for the light corn syrup.  Even with a half cup of maple syrup I couldn’t really taste the maple flavor, so maybe the extract does make a difference.  Either way, they’re good caramels and easy to make.  I shared all but a few pieces with friends and family, and they were enjoyed by all.

The original recipe: Maple Syrup Caramels from Serious Eats

Cream + butter + salt

Maple syrup + golden syrup + sugar + water

Cream mixture + syrup mixture

Combining the two

Simmering

…and simmering

…and simmering

Prepare the pan while you’re waiting for the mixture to heat up.  The original recipe tells you to lightly spray the parchment paper with cooking spray, but I don’t think it was necessary and I’ll probably skip it next time.

248-degree caramel in the pan

With a generous sprinkling of flaky sea salt