I dare you to make a batch of caramel corn and not eat half of it while it's supposed to be cooling. I further dare you to not eat the rest for breakfast the next day. If you can do it, you are a far far stronger person than me.
Caramel corn was one of the things on my summertime cooking "to do" list, which also includes doughnuts and osso bucco with polenta. While searching online for the perfect caramel corn recipe, I got to thinking about all kinds of caramel products and decided I needed to test out wax-paper-wrapped homemade caramels as well. So Monday night commenced the Late (started at about 10 p.m.) Great Caramel Experiment.
For the caramel corn, I used this recipe from Simply Recipes. The recipe was easy to follow and the results (see photos below), completely, ridiculously, dangerously addictive. I have to say, I was most proud of the fact that my eyeballed popcorn measurement wound up filling my kettle exactly. Granted, it was way more popcorn than I needed, but it looked good.
The wax-paper-wrapped caramels were slightly (slightly!) less exciting. I was going for something not-too-chewy and not-too-light, kind of like the caramel you get inside chocolate in the mixed box. I dug around a bit and decided to go with this recipe for fluer de sel caramels from Gourmet magazine via Epicurious. I used regular table salt and added a tsp of vanilla. Compared to what I was after, the results were somewhat "eh." (Not drastic enough to keep me from eating them in rapid succession, however.) My main complaint was the fact that they turned out way too soft, until I put them in the fridge. The flavor was pretty good, but nothing shocking. It definitely improved when I dipped about half the batch in some melted milk/hazelnut chocolate. All in all, nowhere near a cooking failure, but I think I'll keep looking for the perfect caramel recipe.
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