Homemade Sea Salted Caramels

Homemade caramel is to die for. Literally. Treat your Valentine to something they’ll love you for forever!

Recipe source:

cooking with friends kitchen

Ingredients

1 stick of salted butter, cut into pieces
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cups heavy cream
2 cups fine chocolate — milk or dark (chips or bar)
fine sea salt for sprinkling

Directions

1) Place sugar in a 2 quart pot, cook over a medium heat while stirring with a whisk until the sugar dissolves. It will form some clumps before it begins to melts. Once it begins to melt it will form a liquid pretty quickly. You can use a candy thermometer but I tossed my aside after burning my first batch. If you do use one, bring the liquid to about 250 before adding the butter. If you’re doing it by sight, which I recommend, stir the sugar until the liquid becomes a deep golden color bordering on orange.

2) Once orange in color, quickly add the butter which will cause the sugar liquid to rapidly boil and quickly raise the temperature. Stir vigorously and remove from heat.

3) Slowly pour in the cream and mix until smooth. Cool for about ten minutes and then transfer to a glass jar for storing in the refrigerator.

Honestly you can stop right here. My kids eat it right off the spoon or drizzled over ice cream.

How to Make Caramel Filled Sea Salted Caramels

So for the chocolate making you’ll need a few heart shaped candy molds, a fine chocolate of your choosing, your homemade caramel and some sea salt. To make 20 candies, all you do is melt about two cups of chocolate over a double boiler until smooth and spoon half way into each mold. Using a toothpick, work the chocolate up on the side of the mold so that the caramel will be enclosed. Place the half-filled molds into the refrigerator until the chocolate is hardened (about 20 minutes or so). Once the chocolate has hardened, spoon some caramel onto to the chocolate and cover with more chocolate. Return to the refrigerator until the chocolate hardens again. Invert the candies onto a plate.

If you’re salting the caramels, use a course salt like Maldon. Using a barbeque lighter to slightly warm the chocolate (a second at most!) with the flame, melt the top of the chocolate and quickly place several flakes of salt atop the heart. Voila! And then you have like I do something that rivals even the best store-bought chocolate.

Serves