Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
I pride myself on my caramel skills. Every year around Christmas, I start making caramels. Chocolate caramels, cinnamon caramels, coffee caramels, mocha caramels, orange caramels, and on and on. Depending on how generous I’m feeling (and how many I can hide from Bryan), some of those caramels might find their way into peoples’ christmas stockings. My standard caramel recipe isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes more than an hour of constant stirring, not to mention cooling and wrapping time.
Then along comes this recipe. It calls for fewer ingredients and less cooking time, but results in a purer, darker caramel flavor. If they weren’t so good, I’d be a little annoyed.
As is standard with me, I went with one of Medrich’s variations, the nutmeg and vanilla bean caramels, except I used vanilla extract, not a vanilla bean. The nutmeg flavor was sort of lost in the finished product. It’s there, very faintly, but not enough that most people would be able to pick it out. Next time, more nutmeg. I’m also planning to try some of my other favorite variations, such as chocolate or mocha.
Instead of leaving the caramels all plain, I decided to dip half of them in chocolate. Judging from the look on Bryan’s face when he ate one, this was a good decision. A very good decision.
PS. I’m currently taking bribes for next year’s Christmas list . . .
How do you dip your chocolate caramels that result in such gorgeous perfection?! What’s the clear material you used to wrap the materials? Thanks!
Stirring? I can do stirring! I can wrap too. I had your caramels once upon a time. I put them up in my cabinet and each day, I could select just one and that was my special treat for the day. So see? I can control myself for the wrapping and stirring part. Should I fax my resumé? Funny how I can smell these just by thinking about them. Did I mention I was stopping by after work today?
These are wonderful, I think this was the clincher for my grandson in law, he just follows Trista around now hoping that she will give him a treat. She may just wake up some morning and he will be sitting on her porch begging for something. LOL
Yum! Send some my way!