Nov 2008 - Caramels!

Since I didn’t participate in last month’s pizza challenge, I tried to make up for it by making both the caramel cake and the optional caramels. Overall, I loved the flavors and the rich, caramel smell that filled the kitchen. And that sugar rush… ohh, the sugar rush!

The caramel cake was very tasty and the syrup in the recipe helped to add moisture to the cake. The crumb was a little dense, but that may be because I accidentally added the milk too early. The frosting was a bit too sweet for my taste, but that didn’t stop me from covering the cake with even more caramel syrup! Toasted coconut would nicely complement the frosting and cake as well. I had a lot of leftover caramel syrup, but that will happily accompany many future, delicious ice cream sundaes.

I’m not a huge fan of plain caramels, so I decided to use the caramel candy to make caramel apples and candy turtles. I like my caramels to be soft, and so I kept the caramel in the soft ball stage. The caramel was creamy, chewy, and very, very sweet. Since I didn’t have golden syrup, I substituted half honey and corn syrup. Either my caramels were super sweet because of this change, or I just do not have the sweet tooth I thought I did. Unfortunately, I lost the pictures of the candy turtles. I topped the turtles with a simple chocolate coating of melted chocolate chips and they turned out great.

Recipes: Shuna Fish Lydon’s Caramel Cake (http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2006 … he-recipe/) and Alice Medrich’s Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels (Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich, Artisan Press, Copyright 2007, ISBN: 978-1579652111). Thanks to host Dolores (http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com/) and co-hosts Alex (http://blondieandbrownie.blogspot.com/), Jenny (http://forayintofood.blogspot.com/), and Natalie (http://glutenagogo.blogspot.com/).