Caramel is a fall favorite:  caramel apples, caramel corn, caramel candies – they all have a warm, seasonal glow.  Caramel is also very sticky and making this treat is an even messier ordeal.  Hot melting sugar covers spoons, pans, bowls, and anything else it comes it touches.  While I very much wanted to write about, and make, caramels, I also knew the process would be quite a struggle.

Like any civilized society, my apartment has a set of rules; laws if you will.  Chief amongst these is:  “No homemade caramel!”  It seemed like a good rule at the time, caramel is really hard to clean up, and there’s so much potential for disaster.   I’m on a quest, however, to break out of my comfort zone and explore my culinary world, and caramel is just that, an adventure. 

Candy making is something new for me, it’s an elaborate procedure requiring patience and skill.  Unfortunately, there was no convincing my roommates.  A rule is a rule, and nothing (blogazine included) was worth breaking one.  Instead, I headed home (20 minutes east to Canton, MI) to my parents’ kitchen, a place with no restrictions on sugary sweets to make this caramel recipe.
 
After shopping, I learned my first lesson:  write down measurements!  I had not bought enough cream.  In the refrigerator I found some buttermilk, which I used as a replacement.  I combined my dairy ingredients and set them aside on low heat.  Moving on to the next step I learned lesson number two:  Read the entire recipe (closely!) before you start.  I found a pot to hold my corn syrup, sugar, and water, but it was not large enough for the dairy that I would later add.  If I had read the entire recipe I would have saved myself from making this error.

In a state of blissful ignorance, I poured my corn syrup into the small pot.  I should have been thinking “This pot is too small!  Stop pouring!”  Instead I contemplated how much corn syrup reminded me of Ghostbusters II (if you’re familiar with both you’ll understand).  When the time came to combine ingredients, I found no clean pots that were large enough.  Making the best of what I had, I finished caramelizing in a large, flat-bottomed skillet.  

The recipe told me the caramel mixture would be ready when my candy thermometer read 244⁰ Fahrenheit.  I don’t own a candy thermometer – I suspect that I am not unusual this way.  Without a thermometer, I had to rely on my eyes to judge a sufficiently “beautiful dark golden brown” color in the caramel. (“Caramel” in fact comes from the Latin word for “reed,” and shares an entomological ancestry with the Italian word for squid: “calamari.”  One explanation is their shared brown color.)  After 15 minutes I thought I was done.  I poured my caramel into a greased pan and let it harden overnight (the recipe says a refrigerator can speed this process, but it compromises the final texture and quality).

In the end, I didn’t get exactly what I wanted.  Perhaps if I’d had a thermometer, or a better sense of “golden,” I’d have cooked the syrup longer.  Unfortunately, I had been premature.  My finished product was not a hard solid block ready to be cut into tasty little cubes, but rather a runny, gooey, semi-solid.  The caramel tasted great though.   It was sweet and buttery without being too much of either.  The candy also makes a tasty dip because it is so soft.  I scoop a little caramel a bowl and microwave it for 20 seconds.  I tried it on crackers, apples, and grapes with no complaints. I guess that’s lesson number three:  make the best of your mistakes.