Homemade Vanilla Caramel Candies (No Corn Syrup!)

I’ll admit, I try cooking food I know my husband will eat. His taste buds are completely different to everyone else in the house. My kids are great, they will at least try everything. They might not love it but they do try it. I spend hours on my phone looking through recipes and showing my husband to check to see if its something he might be excited to eat. Around 90 percent of the time, he wont like the idea. So off I go to look for another idea for dinner.

He came across vanilla caramel candies totally by accident. I bought them home for myself, assuming he wouldn’t like these either. But instead, he ended up loving them! And since then I’ve been trying to find and experiment on a recipe that doesn’t include corn syrup. I don’t like using corn syrup in any of my recipes. So a recipe for caramels that states CORN SYRUP in the ingredients will be a big no for me.

I finally decided to experiment my way to beautiful and rich vanilla caramel candies, that I was happy to serve my husband and was content enough with the recipe that I could make and send these as gifts to loved ones over the holidays.

Preparation time 10 minutes

Cooking time 20 minutes 

Cooling time 3 hours

Yields 20-24 caramels

Ingredients

250 grams powdered sugar

85 ml heavy cream- room temperature

90 grams butter- room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Line a 6-inch square tin with parchment paper and butter the inside liberally.

2. Put the sugar in a heavy bottom pan, and melt the sugar on a medium heat. Do not stir continuously, only occasionally.  Once the sugar melts, bring the temperature of the sugar up to 175⁰c or up to 180⁰c.  the color of the sugar will be a golden amber color, anything darker will make the caramels bitter and burnt. 

3. Switch off the stove and remove the pan, add the cream and whisk until combined.  Bring the temperature to 120⁰c. 

4. Switch off the gas and add the butter. Mix well until combined.  The mixture will be thick, glossy and smooth. 

5. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin.  Smooth out the top with a greased, offset spatula

6. Set in the fridge for 3 hours or until set.  Cut into cubes with a buttered, sharp knife. 

7. Wrap the candies in parchment paper

Notes

1. I hit a snag whilst making this recipe. I ran out of parchment paper and imports are practically halted due to COVID19, so I couldn’t figure out what to wrap my candies in. honestly at that point I was wishing that I had picked up 5 rolls of parchment paper before the lock down started. But alas I decided to wrap my caramels in small polyethylene squares and twist the ends. I had to make do with what I had. Which is exactly why I started this blog. Because we don’t all have the equipment and the bits and pieces to create a fantabulous dish, and we have to swap out and make do with what we have. The gazillions of polyethylene sheets I had were a godsend! So glad I keep them in store.

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