How to Make Caramel

Learn how to make luscious caramel, a versatile building block for dozens of desserts from elegant crème caramel to simple yet rich sauce for ice cream. Get the basic caramel recipe at http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/basic-caramel-how-to.aspx.

caramel is a really versatile building block for dozens of different desserts making your own Cromwell’s a really simple process but there are a few pitfalls to watch out for one is the kernelization of the sugar which can cause the mixture to solidify and the second is either under cooking or over cooking your caramel in this video I’ll show you how to make a basic caramel that’s perfectly cooked as well as how to transform it into a delicious and easy caramel sauce now for my setup I have a pastry brush with some water and a 2 quart saucepan for the caramel I’m going to start with 1 cup of sugar a quarter cup of water and a quarter teaspoon of lemon juice this is going to help prevent the caramel from crystallizing and seizing up as it cooks so the first thing I’m do is just use my pastry brush and just wipe down the sides of the pan getting any little sugar crystals that are on the side of the pan you want to wash those down ok that looks good and I’m going to place this over medium-high heat and bring it up to a boil now you don’t want to stir your caramel as it cooks that can cause crystallization so you just want to occasionally swirl the pan just like this now this method is called a wet caramel because we’re adding the water there’s also a method called a dry caramel where you don’t add any water it cooks a little bit faster but you run the risk of scorching your sugar so the water is going to help to prevent that so basically we’re just letting that water cook off and then the sugar is going to start to caramelize ok so now that my mixtures come to a boil I’m going to let it continue cooking until it starts to get a little color and I’ll go back in there with my wet pastry brush and just continue to wash down the sides every now and then and again you don’t want to stir but you can give the pan a little swirl okay so it’s just starting to change color a little bit around the edges and in a few spots so at this point you just want to give the pan a little swirl to start to even out the color and this is the time when you really want to watch your caramel because if you step away it can go from undercooked to burnt really quickly so just keep an eye on it and keep swirling the pan now you can test your caramel by playing a little drop on a white plate so I’ll show you what it looks like at this point so this as you can see is really light this is going to have very little of that bittersweet caramel flavor that we’re looking for just a few seconds later and it’s a little bit darker this is a light caramel again we don’t really use caramel at this stage it’s not going to have the complexity that we’re looking for the darker caramel goes the more complexity it’s going to have now we have a medium amber this is what you’ll use for caramel sauce or a lot of different recipes that we have on our website and watch closely and pay attention because in just a few seconds we’re going to have a dark amber and here we have a dark amber now this is what you would use for creme caramel or anywhere where you want a really assertive strong caramel flavor now when you’re at the point you want you want to remove your pan from the heat and you want to use your caramel right away because it hardens up rather quickly one of the easiest things to do with your batch of caramel is to make a caramel sauce so I’ve got a new batch that I’ve started and it’s at the medium amber stage so at this point I’m going to pull it off the heat and add 3/4 of cup of heavy cream now you want to stand back because it will splatter a little bit in caramel is very hot and I’m going to put it back on the heat and you can stir it at this point with the wooden spoon and you’ll notice that some of it starts to seize up but as it melts it’ll get nice and smooth now to finish the caramel I’m going to add two tablespoons of butter I’m just going to add it slowly I’ve cut it up into small pieces and I’ll add just a few at a time and then stir it in to melt beautiful once the butter is all melted the last thing to add is a teaspoon of vanilla extract mmm this smells like heaven this is perfect for drizzling over ice cream over fruit or basically in any kind of chocolate dessert