Easy Homemade Caramels Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the two methods for making caramel? ›

Wet caramel is made by combining sugar and a liquid and cooking them together, while dry caramel is made from just sugar, heated in a dry pan until it liquefies and browns.

Temperature is key when making candy. The difference between a soft caramel and one that's hard and overcooked is all in the temperature. Candy thermometers—like this instant-read thermometer—let you know exactly what stage the caramel is in (thread, soft-ball, firm-ball, hard-ball, soft crack or hard crack).

We're after smooth and creamy caramels! Evaporated Milk: this is what makes a soft caramel candy instead of a hard one. Make sure you use evaporated milk and not sweetened condensed milk for this recipe. Kosher Salt: this gets incorporated into the mixture and balances out the sweetness.

Add acid. Acid ingredients (like vinegar or lemon juice) can help prevent re-crystallization which causes caramel to become grainy. Acid physically breaks the bonds between the glucose and fructose molecules that form sucrose and ensure that it stays apart.

For the "dry" caramel method, you simply heat the sugar in an empty pan until melted and caramelized. It's quick and direct, but the risk is that some parts of the sugar melt faster than others, and can burn before the rest had made it even to light amber.

Sugar Note: Most chefs say that only granulated sugar can be successfully caramelized; other sugars — such as brown sugar and unrefined sugar such as cane sugar — contain impurities that can inhibit caramelization. It's those impurities that can burn before the sugar has time to caramelize.

Technically, the only ingredient you actually need to make caramel is sugar (although many recipes for caramel sauce also call for water, butter, cream, and a bit of salt to cut down the sweetness).

Caramel is, simply, burned sugar. We want to let it melt, darken to an amber color and take on a deep and bittersweet flavor. The best, most flavorful caramel starts with this step. You can caramelize sugar two ways— with the dry method or wet method.

Refrigerate until cooled and hardened. (Best if you refrigerate them overnight, or for several hours. They will be easier to cut and wrap). The caramel will seem hard in the fridge after they're set, but they should be soft at room temperature.

What you make out of condensed milk is dulce de leche. It's often called caramel or toffee, but it's not really either. The recipe is trivial: pour the condensed milk in a pan. Heat it over low heat, stirring continuously, until it turns into dulce de leche.

Why do you put condensed milk in caramel? ›

Because it contains a ton of sugar. An easy caramel/dulce de leche that students have made for many, many years: bring a pot of water to the boil, lower heat to low simmer. Put in an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk. Let it cook for at least a half hour, probably more.

The caramel sauce will harden slightly because of the introduction of a colder temperature, but storing it in a proper container in the fridge will keep it fresh and ready to use for 2 to 3 weeks. Simply warm the caramel sauce in the microwave to make it smooth again.

Just a half teaspoon of lemon per cup of sugar will prevent crystals from forming and ensure that your caramel remains smooth and velvety. You can add the lemon juice to the dry sugar when you put it in your melting pot.

When you start off cooking sugar, it will taste sugary, and it will stay that way unless you cook it long enough. It needs to become more of a golden brown color, at which point the taste evolves from sugary to a caramel taste.

When creating caramel, there are typically two different versions: wet caramel and dry caramel. Wet caramel refers to caramel that has been made by adding water to the sugar during the heating process.

Caramel can be produced in so many forms such as, sauce, a chewy candy, or a hard candy because of how much of an ingredient is added and the temperature it is being prepared at.

Caramelization is a process of browning of sugar used extensively in cooking for the resulting rich, butter-like flavor and brown color. The brown colors are produced by three groups of polymers: caramelans (C₂₄H₃₆O₁₈), caramelens (C₃₆H₅₀O₂₅), and caramelins (C₁₂₅H₁₈₈O₈₀).