The phrase "damn it smitten!" is often repeated in my company. Every couple days she will post some new exercise in dessert that I will be tempted to execute on. Usually my innate laziness kicks in before trying any of her more complex recipes, but the latest dark salted caramel looked simple enough. Well, simple from a time and materials perspective, not a getting it right perspective.
My first batch was passable.
Caramel Experiment #1:
1 cup sugar
6 tablespoons salted butter
1/2 cup of heavy cream + 2 tablespoons
Taste:
Nutty and sweet on first taste, not very salty. Sharp, somewhat bitter aftertaste that lingered. Seemed not as thick as I would have expected.
Perceived Mistakes:
#1. My gas stove is old and has really uneven flame which i expect made the pan too hot on one edge, over cooking some of the sugar before most of the sugar had melted. There never was really a "golden brown" where some recipes say stop, I seemed to go right to dark copper. #2. I did not kill the heat immediately after the butter had melted, leaving it on the flame as I whisked in the cream. This probably didn't improve things either. #3. I used plain old generic grocery store
salted butter, which had been in my fridge for ages. Some higher quality stuff would probably taste better.
2 comments:
Glad you tried it! Did it thicken up for you at all as it cooled/was refrigerated? I am curious. If not, I might need to retest this again... my husband (who dipped apples in it until it was all gone) will be SO disappointed!
It did thicken up eventually, but sadly the taste did not improve.
I'm 100% certain, after reading more, that uneven heating was the culprit. Next time I will use a thicker pan and perhaps someone else's stovetop :)
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