Effervescent Caramels

While I was excited to make some emulsions with soy lecithin, I found out that I actually forgot to order any. As a result, I found some sodium bicarbonate and citric acid to test out some effervescent candies.

The recipe I found called for soft toffees, of which I had none. Continuing the trend of improvisation, I went ahead and made some soft caramels from scratch. I first poured sugar, brown sugar, milk, cream, and butter into a pot to boil.

A brilliant concoction of fats and sugar.

After ten to fifteen minutes, the mixture expanded while boiling and at one point almost boiled over the pot and onto the stove.

I continued to boil it over medium heat for another half hour, watching it thicken, brown, and reduce over time.

I realized that I don’t have a candy thermometer or any kind of cooking thermometer, for that matter. For one last time, I MacGyver’ed a solution to the problem, doing a search online to find an alternative method to test temperature. By dropping a little bit of the caramel into ice water, I was able to determine the texture and firmness it would take if I had stopped heating it at that point. When it came out of the bath with the right firmness, I removed it from the stove and added a little bit of vanilla. I then poured the caramel mixture into a 13X9 inch pan.

It cooled for about an hour, then I cut the solid caramel sheet into little cubes. I then moved on to the effervescence mixture I was going to coat the caramels in. I tried three different coatings: a plain mixture of sodium bicarbonate and citric acid, a mixture of the two additives and sea salt (salted caramels!), and the two additives plus a little sugar. None of the mixtures tasted good. At all. The effervescence worked well, but the flavor from the citric acid was really strong and clashed with the caramels. For the second mixture, the salt was really overpowering, and reducing the amount of salt did little to help. Finally, the sugar plus the richness of the caramels was too much to handle. After tinkering with these ideas, I finally gave up and just wrapped my plain caramels:

I probably won’t try doing this again because making caramels is such a time consuming process (it took me five hours, beginning to end), especially cutting and wrapping the individual pieces. I was able to experience the effervescence, which is the important part. Oh well. Now I just have about three pounds of unaltered caramels. Anyone want some?