All right. I'm sorry. You deserve an apology.
I've been putting off writing this particular post for...a freakishly long time. I know some of you have been waiting. It's been weeks. Months. We're scribbling a different year on our checkbooks. It's that bad.
It's that bad, because these are caramels, which are candies, which require boiling sugar with a thermometer, which means a lot of things can go bad, very fast, very out of control, at very high temperatures. It's not necessarily your safety that's jeopardized, provided you don't spill hot caramel on yourself. Rather, the safety and yumminess of your candies are at extreme risk, should things boil for the worse.
It makes mixing a batter and popping it into a nicely preheated oven look like (excuse the pun) a literal piece of cake.
As of today, I've made about ten batches of caramels. And out of those only one single batch has been completely satisfactory to my aching, sugar-craving heart. I've intentionally (but mostly unintentionally) made plain caramels, chocolate caramels, gingerbread caramels, hard caramels, soft caramels, dark caramels, light caramels...blah blah blabbady blah and someone cue some sad self-pitying music, please.
It's just I had an ideal caramel in mind. And once the idea hit, it wouldn't budge. I had to make. Period.
The perfect caramel, to me, was like this: reddish-brown with a brilliant sheen, firm and solid at room temperature (no drooping or molding to the wrapper), soft and chewy with an easy bite (absolutely no pulling teeth), and most importantly, full of that rich, deep, complex flavor from the perfect balance of butter, sugar, and cream.
I'm sure fewer bakers expect this much out of their caramel creations. But I'm hard to please.
After many failed tries and too many caramel sets tossed whole into the trash, I got it right on my sixth try. The caramels were exactly how I wanted them to be. Honestly, I'm still not completely sure what went right. I still can't tell you with certainty what conditions, tricks, know-hows produce the most perfect, decadent caramels.
But what I can tell you is that homemade caramels, when done right, are so worth it. They're worth the time, the failed experiences, and even the heartache. There's really nothing like it. Store-bought caramels just do not compare.
So what I'm doing today is sharing with you...everything about my caramel-making experience. I'm going to tell you what I did right, what I did wrong, some of my thoughts on candymaking, and advice that has helped me some in the past. Hopefully you can take away something helpful from my goof-ups. Hopefully you can make the perfect caramels on your first or second try, and call it an excellent day.
