Fleur de Sel Caramels

The first thing I think of when I think of store-bought caramels are the mass-market stuff you get in the perfect cubes, especially around halloween. They are a passable caramel, but nothing special. The second thing I think of are Sea Salt Caramel, which are delightful and rich and decadent and expensive.

Ex.

Pen.

Sive.

Caramel is pretty easy to make, all things considered, and there's also a little kitchen excitement at one phase, which is good to get the blood pumping and to let you know you're alive. Okay, it's not that exciting, but it's still fun.

I am using this Fleur de Sel Caramel recipe from Gourmet that I got off my my Epicurious iPad app.

We start with the salty/fat team, which consists of butter, cream, and Fleur de Sel salt. Could you use some other type of salt? Absolutely. But you want to use the same weight of salt, give or take, as 1 tsp of Fleur de Sel, and I neglected to weigh the salt for you, as I was really in a terrible rush. If you are keen, ask in the comments or on twitter if I haven't revised the article, and I'll let you know.

The reason you have to go by weight is that Fleur de Sel has huuuge flakes, as you can see below, and thus takes up much more volume for any given weight than even kosher salt does, so using 1 tsp of kosher salt would make these caramels much more salty.

Take something similar to an 8x8" square pan and line it with parchment paper. Set aside. You may need to place something heavyish on the parchment to keep it down until it decides it's happy being the shape of the pan.

Put the fat team in a small pan and melt everything together.

Your sugar team is sugar, water, and corn syrup. There's also a candy thermometer, which will be useful later. Keen-eyed observers will notice that the sugar called for is 1.5 cups, but in the measuring cup below, it's a lot closer to two cups. This is because when you measure with a dry measuring cup, it is presumed that solids, like the Fleur de Sel vs. Kosher salt, will take up a lot more space than liquids, so the cups in a solid measure are larger than for a liquid measure. I mention this so that you bear in mind that these are not interchangeable. Don't use a solid measuring cup for liquids or vice versa.

The reason why we have corn syrup in this recipe is that sugar likes to crystallize when you heat it up to candy temperatures if you are not careful. Corn syrup has a different molecular structure than table sugar, so it gets in the way of any crystallization. It doesn't affect flavor, but it does make your life easier.

Combine in a sauce pan with plenty of room.

Heat on high until everything is dissolved and bubbling. Stir regularly with a silicone or wooden flat spoon.

Once it's combined, lower the heat to medium or medium-high and heat until it becomes a light caramel color. Don't stir at this point, but instead shake the pan gently from time to time. This distributes the heat and keeps parts of the sugar from becoming a hard candy when the rest is soft.

When the sugar becomes a light caramel color, carefully pour in the cream/butter/salt mixture. Things will become vaguely exciting at this point, with a lot of extra volume as the cream starts to boil immediately and violently, and it will make a roaring noise. If you chose too small of a pan, things will become very exciting as it pours all over your stove, possibly catching fire or making smoke or burning people or animals.

And we don't want that. So make sure you are only using about 1/4 of the volume of your pan before you pour in the cream mixture.

Add your candy thermometer to the pot and simmer and stir over medium heat or so until you get to 248°F, which is the firm ball stage on the thermometer.

Pour your candy into the pan that you prepared earlier.

I tasted some of the caramel that had cooled on my spoon, and decided it didn't have enough salt. So I took the caramel:

And I put some extra Fleur de Sel on it. This also makes for a nice presentation.

Let this cool for about 2 hours. When your done, remove from the pan and take off the parchment paper, and if you prepared your parchment as messily as I did, your caramel will look like so:

Cut off the edges to make a square block. You don't want to serve crazy-shaped caramel to guests, so the only ethical thing to do is to set it aside as a treat for you to enjoy throughout the day.

Cut into square-ish pieces.

If you're giving it away, or you need to store for any period of time, the candy may deform at room temperature, so take some parchment paper…

And wrap the candies up in them.

Comments

[Sarah]

We are totally making these. Oh yes. Thank you for the recipe. I have been looking for a good one.

[Lisa]

I never thought salt and caramel would go together but OMG it so does!
I made the ones from Alton Brown, they are also good.
Love this blog :)