Easy Salted Caramels
As my blogging career goes on, I grow fonder and fonder of making things with sugar and better and better at it. I always know we’re at the crossover time from autumn to Christmas when I get the urge to boil sugar. There was rather good bacon toffee and hot buttered rum caramels and there was less successful fudge, but this year I wanted something equally sweet and impressive but much simpler to make as gifts.
I found it when I was making brigadeiros for the Brixton Blog. These are a Brazilian party favourite made from cooked condensed milk, cocoa powder and butter and then rolled into a ball and coated in hundreds and thousands. They are all chewy fudgeyness and crunch at once and I have no idea why they aren’t better known outside Brazil.
But that seemed too simple for me. I needed to give the recipes a little poke and twist to make it fit me and my love of condensed milk. I decided to omit the cocoa powder and add sea salt to the condensed milk instead for a lighter creamier, more grown up feel.
And then I remembered I had some popping candy I impulse purchased in Waitrose one day I was killing time in there. I would roll my creations in popping candy and make them pure big kid fun in one easy step. It also looks awesome with the colour of the caramelised condensed milk.
These are a great way to make homemade sweets in under an hour (most of which is cooling time) and for mere pennies if you’re looking for eyecatching gifts over the next few weeks. They’ll keep for about 3 days once rolled in the popping candy or up to 5 if you use that glimmer sugar for baking decoration instead.
Easy Salted Caramels (makes about 25)
- 1 x 397g tin of condensed milk
- 25g salted butter
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 25g popping candy
This is so easy and quick to make. Put the entire can of condensed milk into a heavy saucepan along with the butter and sea salt. Heat on a medium heat, stirring constantly. Do not take your eye off it or stop for a second or it will burn.
Enjoy the calming rhythm of stirring and cook the condensed milk this way for about 8 minutes or until it thickens up and looks stiff and leaves a void on the base of the pan when you drag a spatula through it.
Take off the heat immediately and add the vanilla extract, beating it through well. Pour the mixture out onto a lightly greased plate, smoothing it out so it isn’t too thick and leave it to cool for about 45 minutes.
Then using a teaspoon, scoop up a spoonful of the cooled caramel and roll it into a ball. Dredge it through the popping candy and place in a petit four case. Repeat until you have about 25 caramels.
Kids will love the rolling and dredging so feel free to use as much imagination for the coating as you fancy. This is the time to hit up the baking aisle and see what you can find. You could also try varying the flavours in the caramels and using chopped nuts or desiccated coconut to roll them.
They are unashamedly simple and sweet and utterly delicious, like really good white chocolate. It took more willpower than I thought I had to give mine away…
Hi! Just wanted to say how happy I was after I came across your blog today . I was googling whether Guinness was FODMAP friendly (I made spiced Guinness gingerbread yesterday, substituting the flour and sour cream in the original recipe but forgot to check about the beer!) and was directed to your page. Anyway, I’ve been a Brixtonite for 5 years, and a follower of the Brixton Blog for longer. I’ve suffered with terrible IBS for the last 2 1/2 years and been fodmapping for the last 3 months. I’m a big foodie and love cooking, and am very sad that I am now so restricted and can’t really eat out! Sushi has been my saviour, and I spend most weekends knocking up FODMAP free stock from cheap chicken wings to experiment with Asian soups, risotto, stew and the like and it is so great to read about someone in a similar situation. The fodmapping has helped but not been the magic cure I hoped it might be, so still definitely need to find my feet with what works for me! If you have any tips or staple recipes you come back to time and time again I’d love to try them, and if you’ve found anywhere in Brixton that serves food we can eat (apart from Fujiyama and Ichiban) I would love to know! This might all be in the blog, I haven’t read it in detail yet – I was so excited when I realised you were a Brixton fodmapper I wanted to contact you immediately! So sorry if I’m asking stuff you’ve already written about. Anyway, just wanted to say how lovely it felt to come across a local friendly face also trying to make work the dysfunctional marriage of a love of food and an uncooperative gut! xx
How absolutely divine. I wonder if you could use dried raspberry powder as the coating to give a grown up tang?
Jen: I haven’t covered all that in the blog yet because I didn’t want to bore non fodmappers, but I’m tempted now! I’m so excited by another person in my boat! I’m still having issues myself and I suspect I have SIBO or Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth which is easily Googleable and seems to co-exist with fodmaps. Then there’s fructose malabsorption and the fact not everything is fodmap tested yet…
I could talk about it all day so you ever fancy a coffee or a peppermint tea in person, let me know! Email me at northsouthfood at gmail dot com
PS: Guinness is technically not fodmap friendly due to barley, but I can manage a pint before I start to struggle!
Alicia: where did you find such a thing because it would be PERFECT! (Yes, genuinely all caps level perfect!)