Caramel Sauce 101

When I first started baking, I made the classic rookie mistake of "winging it." For those of you unfamiliar, 'winging it' is the act of baking without any sort of recipe or ratio, and is usually the result of laziness. My first experience with its disastrous consequences came about after I decided that I knew the ingredients in caramel sauce, and thus could make it without any guides. After covering my delicately prepared dessert in rock-hard amber liquid instead of the gooey, creamy sauce I had envisioned, I hung my head in shame.

Since that fateful day, I've always doggedly followed recipes for caramel. As should you. But wouldn't it be better to know the proportions (as we do for ganache) for each type of caramel? I think so. So I put together a little test using heavy cream, milk, yogurt, water, and butter as additions to the initial sugar. And I made sure to write them careful down, so as to share them with you lovely people.

All ratios assume that the weight of sugar used equals 100%. To make the caramel sauce, I cooked sugar with a splash of water and cream of tartar in a saucepan until they reached an amber color, then whisked in the test ingredient.

Test Caramels:

• Caramel #1 - 50% water: This caramel was bland and not at all creamy. It kept its shape fairly well (only minimal spreading at first) and didn't harden. For this reason, I chose not to test with a higher than 50% water content.
• Caramel #2 - 50% milk: This caramel was not creamy either, but contained burnt milk solids. It wasn't as bland as Caramel #1 and spread was roughly the same.
• Caramel #3 - 50% heavy cream: This caramel was fairly creamy, thick, and stayed fairly soft. It was gooey, and stuck to a spoon even upside down.
• Caramel #4 - 50% butter: The butter melted but would not mix fully into this caramel. The result was a very hard sugar with a thick layer of grease on top.
• Caramel #5 - 100% cream: This caramel was smooth and creamy, but stayed very soft and was not at all gooey.
• Caramel #6 - 50% yogurt: This caramel had lots of burnt milk solids, was grainy, slightly gooey, and had an odd, sour taste.
• Caramel #7 - 20% butter: This caramel was just as hard as #4, but without excess butter sitting on top.
• Caramel #8 - 30% cream: This caramel was hard, though not quite as hard as #4 or #7.

Conclusion:

Caramel #4, made with 50% heavy cream, was by far the best sauce of the group and heavy cream was the only additional ingredient which really worked. The caramel with 30% heavy cream ended up too hard, and the caramel with 100% heavy cream was very soft and runny. For a thick, gooey caramel, 40-50% is as little heavy cream as you should use. That will produce a nice thick and gooey caramel which will probably be fairly sticky. As you climb the scale toward 100%, a progressively thinner and runnier caramel will form. Over 100%, the caramel would be close to water in viscosity. This tells me that caramel needs both enough fat and water to create both softness and creamy-ness without burning or excluding the fat.

I hope everyone else found this experiment as beneficial as I did. Enjoy your caramel making, everyone!

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Caramel Apple Pretzels

That's right. Caramel Apple + Pretzels. All this recipe took was a trusty pretzel recipe from Alton Brown, some apples, and a drizzle of hot caramel and perfection was achieved. They were sweet, salty, and delicious. Caramel apple fever is here, folks. Be prepared.

Pretzel recipe adapted from Alton Brown.
Ingredients:

• 4 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tsp instant yeast
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 6 tbsp butter
• 2 granny smith apples, diced
• 2/3 cup baking soda
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 tbsp butter

Directions:

1. First, combine the flour, yeast, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer with dough hook attachment and mix to combine.
2. Next, add the water and butter before kneading approximately 7 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and not sticky.
3. Add the apples to the dough and knead just until incorporated.
4. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and cover. Allow it to rise for about an hour.
5. Cut the dough into 12 equal portion, roll into a long rope, and shape into pretzels (or cut into pretzel bites).
6. Preheat the oven to 450 F and place the shaped pretzels onto parchment lined sheet pans and cover while you bring 2/3 cup baking soda and 10 cups of water to boil in a large pot.
7. Boil the pretzels for approximately 30 seconds each and place them back on the parchment paper.
8. Brush the tops with egg wash, heavy cream, or water, and sprinkle a small amount of salt onto each pretzel.
9. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until the pretzels are nice and golden.
10. While the pretzels cool, add 1/3 cup water and 1 cup sugar to an oiled saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Cook the sugar until it becomes a dark amber in color, then remove from heat.
11. Promptly stir in the heavy cream and butter. Allow the caramel to cool for a few minutes.
12. Drizzle the caramel over the pretzels once you think it's cool enough not to burn your mouth (or more likely until you can't wait any longer) and enjoy.

A few simple additions turn pretzels from awesome salty snack to perfectly balanced and fun dessert.

What's your favorite fair food? The most outrageous you've come across?

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Caramel Monkey Bread

I've been promising the fiancee monkey bread for quite a while now. Except both of us kept forgetting. Somehow monkey bread or monkeys would come up and we'd both go "Oh yeah." And then promptly forget again. This time, I actually made it though. Probably just because I was on a bit of a bread kick, but no one's complaining.

The dough recipe comes from one of my favorite cook books, The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.

Ingredients:

• 3.25 oz sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2.75 oz butter
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• 16 oz bread or AP flour
• 2 tsp instant yeast
• 9 oz milk
• 1 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Cream together the butter, sugar, and salt. Once smooth, beat in the egg and lemon until smooth.
2. Add the flour, yeast, and milk, and knead until the dough passes the windowpane test.
3. Ferment for 2 hours.
4. Mix together 1 1/2 cups brown sugar and 2/3 cup heavy cream until smooth. Pour half of this mixture into the bottom of a bundt pan.
5. Cut the dough into small bites, about the size of a golf ball.
6. Mix together 2/3 cup brown sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon. Roll each ball in mixture.
7. Place the balls into the pan, not packing too tightly.
8. Pour the rest of the caramel mixture over the dough and allow to proof at room temperature until doubled in size.
9. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
10. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the bread is golden brown.

I promise I'll have more stuff on recipe development and the good 'ol Confectious you're all used to soon. In fact, I'm working on something really big right now! So stay tuned.

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