Sea Salt Butter Caramels- Surf and Turf.

It would be too bad if salted caramels became, as it were, a victim of their own success. American tastes have always run to the salt-tinged sweet; we just never identified it in a way that could deem it faddish. Chocolate covered pretzels, tin roof sundaes, gritty Reece's peanut butter cups, cracker jacks, pay day bars- salt keeps sweets lively and balanced. Fashion aside, salted caramels are one of our confectionery staples. They glitter with flaky salt scraped off of rocks in the sea in Crete and the other ingredients are just cream and butter and sugar, and a shot of rum, marrying the flavors and giving a subtle base note. These are a satisfying project- turning a liquid into a dense creamy solid with a gently yielding chew feels like magic. They have a bold luscious dairy richness, and that bite of salt is fresh like the sea air.

Just because making candy is like magic does not mean it is difficult- a candy thermometer makes these very simple. (However, growing up without a candy thermometer and using instead glasses of ice water lined up on the counter to test the consistency brought me closer to the secret life of things).

We will need:

600 g/ 3 C  sugar

120 g/ 1/2 C corn syrup

120 ml/ 1/2 C water

1 tsp flaky sea salt

400 ml/ scant 2 C heavy cream

140 g/ 5 oz butter

1 shot rum, or some vanilla

Before starting to cook, line a loaf pan with foil and butter it thickly and thoroughly. Get our a candy thermometer and put it in a glass of hot water.

Heat the cream, butter, and salt together in a small pan.

Take a large, tall pan (the mixture will bubble up like mad when we add the cream to the caramel), pour the sugar into the center, the water around it, and the corn syrup over the whole. Warm, then let it come to a full boil- it will be frothy and white-

Keep a watching it- don't leave the stove for a second. It will stay white, and white, and white, then. as soon as it starts to take on some color, it darkens quickly. When it is a deep honey color, stand back as far as you can and pour in the hot cream. It froths and steams like a volcano and is really loud.

As soon as it subsides, give it a few stirs with a long-handled wooden spoon, attach a candy thermometer, and again keep the closest watch. The thermometer climbs slowly at first and then picks up speed.

The very second it reaches 115 C/ 240 F, take it from the heat, add the rum, and pout it into the waiting pan lined with buttered foil. Sprinkle lightly with more sea salt. Let it cool at room temperature- which takes forever or at least 5 - 6 hours, or put it outside, as I did. It's winter, and the cold caramel gets really hard and you'll think, at least I did, that it is overcooked it and it would be too hard and chewy. As it comes to room temperature and also seems to take in some softening moisture from the air, it is firm enough to hold its shape, soft enough to melt on the tongue.

Turn the bar out upside down onto a piece of non-stick baking paper. Carefully peel off the foil and, while still upside down, but it into whatever size pieces you like (cutting through the softer underside makes neat pieces).

Finishing-

They are ready to eat and delicious plain, but hard to wrap or serve or give- you cannot trust the surface to not stick to anything after a few hours. An elegant solution is to dip the bottoms only in tempered chocolate. Also, the salt has sunk in and you can't see it so well- a few streaks of chocolate on top give the more salt something to cling to and shimmer.

Take a little over half of 200 g/ 7 oz. dark chocolate, melt it in the microwave or over simmering water, then add the rest of the chocolate. Stir until it melts in and the temperature of the chocolate cools (it will feel cool to your bottom lip). Dip the bottoms of the caramels, letting it come up the sides as much as you like, set them on a piece of non-stick paper, and drizzle the rest over the tops, sprinkling with salt flakes right away before it has a chance to set (tempered chocolate sets fast).

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Truffles with Caramel and Salt- Viva Diva!

Chocolate is one demanding diva of an ingredient- it dazzles, but you really, really don't want to cross it. This is why so many home made chocolate confections go wrong. You'd think using such a luscious thing would guarantee success- what isn't great with chocolate? True- it is lovely with lots. But so tempermental. Most home confections go wrong because one would think that melted chocolate will simply go back to the way it was originally when it cools back down. It doesn't- it needs to be finessed and cajoled by a not difficult but nonetheless very precise procedure- tempering (which David Lebovitz guides us so nicely through!).

These salted caramel truffles, adapted from a recipe in a dog-eared copy of Bon Appetit circa 2004- are coated by a brilliant method I have never otherwise seen. They appear to be self-tempering. We'll still need an instant read thermometer (the best I can describe chocolate melted to a temperature 46 C/114 F is "quite warm" when you touch it to your lower lip). But once you have an instant read thermometer you'll have it out all the time, jamming it into poultry thighs to see if they're safely done. But, we skip the tempering step, don't have the difficulty of keeping the tempered chocolate the right temperature and consistency, and, the very warm chocolate is thinner than tempered chocolate and easier to work with as a coating.

The reason this works is I suppose that we are dipping chilled centers. Is the result every bit as shiny as tempered coating on a room temperature center? Perhaps not as shiny, but we can add some shine of our own- the glitter of salt crystals, and a little brush of luster dust (not at all expensive at specialty baking shops, and a speck goes a long way).

Please note- these need an overnight chill in the refrigerator- so start the day before you want them.

We'll need:

100 g/ 1/2 C sugar

50 ml/ 3 T water

200 ml/ scant 1 C heavy cream

200 g/ 7 oz. milk chocolate, chopped

200 g/ 7 oz. dark chocolate, chopped

a nice pinch of sea salt

300 g/ 11 oz dark chocolate, chopped

more sea salt for the finished truffles

First the caramel milk chocolate ganache- boil together into a syrup and let it turn a deep honey color. Remove from the heat, and add the heavy cream. Stir and let the cream dissolve the caramel. Now stir in the milk chocolate. Whisk very gently until completely smooth and blended, and chill.

When quite cold, roll them into balls of any size you like- mine here are about 2.5 cm/ 1 inch across- I like a a satisfying two to five bite size. Put them into a dish that can be covered with plastic wrap, and chill them thoroughly- overnight if you can. We want them cold- cold and firm.

Take the centers out of the refrigerator at the very last minute,
so they stay nice and cold for dipping.

When you're ready to coat them, get out a piece of non-stick parchment and put it on a cutting board that can fit in the refrigerator. We'll also need a dipping fork, or a regular fork- but a dipping fork leaves lots of room for the excess chocolate to drip back into the bowl, and the truffles will not have little flat pools of chocolate around the bottom. We'll also need some coarse sea salt flakes to scatter over the top.

Put the chopped dark chocolate in a metal bowl that fits nicely over a small pot of water. Let the water come to a simmer, but not a boil, and stir the chocolate until melted. Make sure that no water gets into the chocolate- it will "seize"-  turn into a lumpy and unusable mass. It's small amounts of liquid that do this- not large ones like we used above in the ganache center. Melt until quite warm- 46 C/115 F on the instant read thermometer. This is a lot warmer than the melting point, and in fact is the temperature that you start the tempering process with, before bringing it down to around 31 C/ 90 F.

Now simply dip the cold centers one at a time into the warm chocolate bath, roll them around a moment so they are thoroughly coated, lift gently up, letting the excess chocolate drain back into the bowl, and give the fork a nice tap on the rim of the bowl before transferring the coated truffle to the parchment. after you have done five or six, sprinkle their tops with a few flakes of sea salt. don't wait until you are finished dipping all of them, or some of them may have set and they won't keep hold of the salt.

And that's about it, unless you'd like a little extra sparkle. If you would, wait until they are well set (you could put them in the refrigerator towards the end of the one hour they usually need) and the chocolate is definitely dry to the touch. Then, just dip a small paint brush into the dry luster dust- I used "cranberry"- and touch it lightly here and there to the tops. 

These are surprisingly simple to make for such a glamorous, delicious result. 

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