Caramel candies were fascinating me for a long while and finally done and dusted today. I tried twice already and the texture and flavour of these final babies totally depends on when you stop the caramel.

As I had always wanted my caramel to have the deep amber, I tried to go beyond the prescribed temperature and what I had was a totally hard candy which was even really difficult to cut through. I trashed this one and the temperature might be over 300 degree C :O

I repeated the whole process again and decided to stick to the temperature. The advised soft candy will be at 248 Degree C. Which to me was too pale, again I decided to head over to one shade extra and I stopped at 260 Degree C which is the one you are seeing here

This was rather a toffee that was chewy and I liked how I had to chew them and it stuck all over and it got me asking for more. The 248 would have been much softer than these and easy to handle while chewing. So it totally depends on when you will stop your caramel and you can play around having different textures and the flavour that comes along.

You can also add toasted nuts of your choice finally to the finished caramel before pouring into the pan. Or you could as well spread out the toasted nuts in the prepared pan as the bottom most layer and then pour the prepared caramel over the nuts and let it set.

As an added component, you could set the caramel first for few hours and then add melted chocolate over these and allow to set and then cut them into squares are desired shapes. They will be caramel and chocolate together in a bite.

If you do not have a candy thermometer, then you don’t have to fret. You just need to understand the stages of sugar, from soft ball to hard ball and then you are good to go. But you need to test the caramel by pouring a drop in a bowl of cold water and take out the dropped caramel syrup to check its consistency and understand if the caramel is done yet or not.

Recipe source – Martha Stewart

1.Line up an 8 inch square cake pan with aluminum foil and butter the same.

2. Add cream, butter, sugar and light corn syrup in a heavy bottomed saucepan and bring it on high flame until the butter melts and everything combines together.

3. Let it come to a boil and then bring down the flame to medium low for 5 minutes. Do not stir.

4. Cover the saucepan with a lid and bring the flame to low. Leave for 5 to 7 minutes. You can start stirring your sauce from here using a wooden spoon.

5. Once the sauce has thickened and caramel colour has reached, check in your candy thermometer for the temperature anywhere between 248 degree C to 260 degree C.

If you do not have a candy thermometer, use a small bowl of room temperature water, add a drop of the caramel sauce. Use your fingers and try to remove the drop of sauce from the water and make a ball out of it. The ball should be soft to roll in between your fingers. If the drop of sauce dissolves completely then you still need to cook your sauce further more.

6. Pour the sauce into the prepared pan. Let it rest over night. Cut them into different shapes that you would like. Wrap them in transparent plastic sheets or butter paper cut down into a smaller size.

Store in airtight containers.

I gulped 5 squares by the time I finished taking the pictures