Homemade Caramels
Can you make homemade candy for Holiday gifts easily in a Small Kitchen or RV Galley and get Big Flavors! The answer is YES. This recipe relies on the use of a microwave oven, a 2 quart microwave safe glass measuring cup and a heat tolerant spatula.
Makes about 180 individual caramels
Ingredients
1 cup or (2cubes) unsalted butter
1 tsp unsalted butter (1/2 tsp to coat each of the baking parchment sheets of paper)
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
14 oz sweetened condensed milk
1 cup Karo light corn syrup
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
t/2 tsp coarse sea salt
Directions
- Place a sheet of baking parchment paper on each of 2 – 9″ x 11″ baking pans.
- Lightly coat the top of each parchment paper with 1/2 tsp of softened butter, set aside.
- Place the butter in the 2 quart glass measuring cup, melt on HIGH for 1 minute.
- Add sweetened condensed milk, brown sugars and karo syrup, stir.
- Heat in microwave on HIGH for 5 minutes, stir.
- Heat in microwave on HIGH for another 5 minutes, stir.
- Heat in microwave on HIGH for 4 minutes, then stir and do a sample test to check the consistency of the candy to see if it forms a ‘soft ball’ when a half a teaspoon of the boiling syrup is added to a cup that is 2/3 full with cold water. Gentley move the caramel blob at the bottom of the cup to see if it holds a soft squishy like ball shape or close to it!
- Heat the caramel again in the microwave as needed using 1 minute intervals, checking the candy consistency as noted in #5. I did this for a total of 3 times which made step #5 a total of 4 minutes plus, 1 min. plus 1 min., plus 1 minutes…4 plus 1 minute bursts of microwaving and stirring which made this step 7 minutes.
- Add the vanilla, stir and pour the caramel (semi-liquid onto the buttered parchment paper on 2 9″ x 11″ baking pans.
- Lightly sprinkle coarse sea salt.
- Let the candy cool. I placed the baking pans on hot pads in the fridge for an hour.
- Lift the parchment filled candy out of the baking dish, cut the caramels into about 3/4″ x 3/4″ pieces.
- Roll the individual caramels in wax paper and twist the ends to seal each caramel. Use wax paper squares that are almost 3″ x 3″ in size for wrapping the candies.
Note: My total microwave times were 5 minutes, plus 5 minutes plus 4 minutes, plus 3 bursts of 1 minute – for a grand total of 17 minutes.
My cookbook Small Kitchen Big Flavors! is available at a great Introductory Price on Ebay and my blog site at : http:/smallkitchenbigflavorsblog.wordpress.com
Chef MJ
Thank you Mary Jane. How’s Idaho?
Beth Cushing Bcushing85@gmail.com 970 988-4185
>
LikeLike
We love it here!!! Thanks for checking in. Let’s stay in touch.
LikeLike