Homemade Caramel Class

My cooking expertise leans toward the savory side, as is pretty obvious by reading the past few blog entries. I’m just more comfortable with the wider margin of error that there seems to be in the savory world. It seems like you can almost always correct poor seasonings (usually with a dash of sugar or salt depending on the situation) and you have to try hard to really overcook most savory dishes. In the world of pastry and sweets, however, you can’t just wing it because there is so much chemistry involved. Most of the time, the ratios have to be exact or the recipe just won’t work. Whereas you can throw an extra bell pepper or extra meat into a stir-fry or a stew without doing much damage, you can’t really throw extra flour or extra sugar into a cake or a cookie. The sweet side just doesn’t work that way. Frankly, it scares me. But it also fascinates me. So I read the sweet side cookbooks without ever venturing into my kitchen to test their recipes because they seem too challenging with all their fancy techniques and precise measurements and exact temperatures and so forth.

How I Landed in Caramel Class

Enter the Sur La Table Cooking School. Sur La Table is a high-end cooking store, like Williams Sonoma, but the store near me has an attached teaching kitchen that accommodates classes of sixteen. Each cooking class has a specific theme, and they provide the equipment, the ingredients, and the recipes, which are printed up in nice booklets for you to take home. Each chef-instructor has his or her own method of running the class, but each individual student usually gets hands on experience with the techniques and the tools that the class involves. The pastry chef-instructor is particularly knowledgeable and personable, and a personal favorite of mine. My girl friends and I have done three classes together at the local cooking school over the past year. We’ve learned how to make ravioli, how to laminate dough to make croissants, and how to master a few techniques to make French desserts. The cooking classes were a safe space to play with new equipment and learn new techniques, especially with the pastry chef-instructor.

At the beginning of October, I noticed that the local cooking school was offering a homemade caramel class. The menu was chocolate caramel bark, caramel apples, and chocolate caramel turtles. I was so excited! I had reviewed a caramel book for NetGalley in the Spring, but I felt like the majority of those recipes relied on caramel nibs rather than actually making caramel from scratch. I tested one recipe out of that book, and the instructions were so poorly written that I burned the caramel on my first attempt. I did adapt the recipe and manage to successfully make it at least twice afterward, but it wasn’t a real caramel recipe. I was ready to make caramel for real this time. I contacted the ladies who attended the last cooking class with me to assess their interest. Four of them were tentatively available for a late October class. But we decided to wait to register because sometimes the cooking classes were offered at a reduced price in the middle of the month. And they were! So the five of us registered. And then I invited another girl friend who had recently moved to NYC to join us. And one of the ladies invited her mother to join us. And another of the ladies invited a girl friend and her father to join us. All said and done, we were a team of nine people in a class of sixteen.

What I Did in Caramel Class

Caramel class did not disappoint, even though the majority of caramel making requires patiently watching a pot full of sugar boil until it reaches the desired temperature.

The class began with a demonstration of caramel making by the pastry chef-instructor. She prepared an easy caramel sauce that started with a basic mixture of sugar and water in a heavy medium slope sided saucepan. She also added a squeeze of lemon to prevent crystallization. She then stepped back from the pot to let it do its thing over medium heat. The contents gradually went from opaque white to clear to amber brown. Occasionally she swirled the pot to ensure that the contents were being heated evenly, but she did not stir it as that promoted the formation of sugar crystals. (Apparently those are a bad thing in caramel!) Once the sugar reached a little below 335F, the chef-instructor pulled the pot from the stove and, using a clean whisk, whisked in some heavy whipping cream. After that was fully incorporated, she added in the vanilla bean paste, butter, and a fraction of the salt called for in the recipe. The result was a liquid caramel sauce for dipping apples during our class break. But it would have been really good on vanilla ice cream as well.

After the demonstration, the class split into two groups – our crew and everybody else – to make two pots of caramel toffee. First, we melted what seemed like a ton of butter in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Once the butter was melted, then we stirred in the sugar, water, corn syrup, and salt. According to the chef-instructor, the corn syrup was a necessary ingredient because it aids in the prevention of crystallization. Then we stepped back and watched until the pot reached just under 275F, swirling occasionally but never stirring. Because of the butter foam on top of the mixture, it was really difficult to tell what color the sugar was turning so we had to rely on the thermometer. Once the pot reached the desired temperature, we poured it evenly over a prepared pan of toasted slivered almonds and hurriedly set it aside to cool at room temperature.

Finally, the class split into three groups – our crew and two others – to make three pots of caramel. We combined a lot of sugar with seemingly scant amounts of water and corn syrup in a heavy large saucepan. Again, we stepped back and watched until the pot reached just under 335F, swirling occasionally but never stirring. This seemed to take forever and I was sorely tempted to turn our burner up from medium to medium high. But I hung in there with my patience set to maximum levels. Once the pot reached the desired temperature, we poured in some heavy cream and steam came rising out of the pot as it viciously bubbled and foamed. I’m told that I looked very frightened by it! But we stirred through the drama, and the mixture calmed down enough to add butter and a fraction of the salt called for in the recipe. The result was a thick creamy caramel – basically what you think of when you think of caramel.

We concluded the class by finishing the candies. The pastry chef-instructor demonstrated how to temper chocolate, which involves heating chocolate, then cooling it, then heating it again to give it a nice shine. Most of the tempered chocolate was spread on the pans of caramel toffee, but some was reserved in piping bags for later use on the turtles. The chocolate covered caramel toffee was put in the refrigerator to chill while we completed the rest of the candies. One of the three pots of caramel was dedicated to making caramel apples. Each of us swirled an apple in the caramel until it was coated, and then the caramel coated apple was whirled in sprinkles or mini M&Ms (or both!). Once the caramel apples were completed, the other two pots of caramel had cooled enough to spoon onto pecan clusters to make turtles. The chef-instructor demonstrated one scant teaspoon to connect all the pecans in the cluster, but our crew was much more generous with the caramel than that! After all the pecan clusters had caramel spooned on them, we piped tempered chocolate on top of the caramel to complete the turtles. Then, those were whisked away to the freezer to quickly set. The chocolate covered caramel toffee came out of the refrigerator. It was nice and stiff – and as brittle as a Heath bar. We smashed that up into little pieces and divided it up among ourselves to take home for late. Shortly afterward, the chocolate covered turtles came out of the freezer, and we also divided those up to take home. It was all quite delicious!

What I Learned in Caramel Class

If I had to summarize the top five things I learned in caramel class, it would be the following:

1. Caramel making takes patience because watching the pot boil without stirring it is boring.

2. Pull the caramel off the heat at the low end of the temperature range (if possible) because it will continue to carry over cook in the pot.

3. A digital thermometer is okay to use for candy making, and it can be a cheap one.

4. Always clean the digital thermometer in between testings to avoid introduction of crystals into the cooked sugar.

5. Never use the utensil that you used to mix the uncooked sugar to mix the cooked sugar because that could introduce crystals.

How I Will Continue My Candy Making Journey

Fortuitously enough, Ten Speed Press approved me for a candy making book on NetGalley before the caramel class started, so I have approximately one and a half months left to experiment with the caramel recipes and other candy recipes in that. Now that I am less afraid of cooking sugar, I may actually do it. However, the publisher has requested that I don’t publish anything about the book until the week of its publication, so you won’t be able to read about my recipe testing adventures until March 2017.

The ladies also have been talking about a custom private class at the cooking school, and candy has been floated as one of the ideas for that. I’m not sure whether that will actually fly – and if so when it will fly – but it will be certain to be a lot of fun if it does!