Caramels from the dark side

Although Alton Brown tells us salt and sweet treats can go together, remember those salt demos he did for Valentine's Day last year?, I was still unsure about this combo. But the more I thought on the subject, I realized yes these make a wonderful pair--chocolate covered pretzels anyone? So in the newest Good Eats episode on salty and sweet, the caramels were the one item that caught my attention.

At first, it was still foreign sounding to add salt to something as sweet as caramel but I trusted that AB would not be steering us wrong on this. Therefore, I dove into making the candies.

This was my first attempt at making caramels, however, fudge and hard candy are very familiar items I have made so the process was a well traveled path.

Creating the caramels is amazingly simple. Cook the sugar, water, corn syrup and cream of tartar mixture until it reaches 340 degrees. You do need to be very attentive as the mixture reaches that temp because it can quickly go from deep amber to burnt! And though the thermometer reads not quite to the target, remember the temp will still rise after it saucepan is removed from the heat so tread with care.

Slowly add the heavy cream/soy sauce and butter. At this point adding the cooler items to the hot mixture causes the to froth and fuss a lot. Once calmed, return to the heat and cook until it reaches 255 degrees or the soft ball stage. Now pour into the prepped pan and wait 30 minutes to sprinkle on the salt.

In finally deciding to make this completely as AB did, I had to add the salf to the top. But I used a finer grained sea salt, not course, because I didn't have any on hand. The finer grain sea salt did seem to dissolve in places, but did well overall.

Then to taste the salty sweet creations. Oh by the way, using a pizza cutter is a great method and makes it very easy to cut!

Back to tasting. I called it an OMG moment. The salt does elevate the taste. It makes the candy almost pop with an extra level of flavor. Wow!

And these candies are... well plain and simply... evil. I'm serious. As I write this, they are beckoning me to try a piece (or two).

Try your hand at AB's Dark Salty Caramels