Homemade Christmas Caramels

I don’t think Christmas could happen without caramels. Well, at least not at my farm! I don’t mean a caramel sauce or a hard caramel candy, but instead those soft, chewy, melt-in-your mouth caramels; the ones I really think you can only truly understand if they’re homemade. Growing up, I seemed to always know who made the “good” caramels and I knew someday that I had to make them as well. As with many homemade candies, I think people are scared of caramels. But honestly, a thermometer makes the work easy and pretty much stress free! Soon you can be “the one” with the good caramels! This recipe makes one 9×13 pan (which ends up being approximately 40 caramels), but I also explain how to variate the recipe to make unique caramels!

Homemade Caramels

2018-01-28 20:23:37

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Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

Grease a 9x13 baking pan well with vegetable oil. Line pan with parchment paper and grease paper as well. Set aside.
In a 4-quart heavy bottomed saucepan, bring cream, sugar, butter and corn syrup to a boil. Continue to boil until 248 degrees is reached on a candy thermometer. Take the temperature at different spots in the kettle as it can variate. Swirl pan every so often to evenly heat.
When temperature reaches 248 degrees, remove from heat and stir in salt and vanilla. Immediately pour into prepared pan.
Cool 6-8 hours or up to 24 to allow caramel to set up.
Use parchment sling to remove caramels from pan. Remove caramels from parchment and cut with large sharp knife. The caramels are slightly sticky, so to keep shape and from sticking to each other, individually wrap in parchment papers or wax paper.

For turtle caramels

Sprinkle 1 cup toasted and chopped pecans over hot caramel. Let cool. Drizzle over 1/2 cup melted semi sweet chocolate. Let chocolate cool before cutting.

For salted caramels