A Christmas tradition of the Gerdes family – all waited earnestly for Christmas because Linda would make caramels. Their favorite treat – each child would receive their own bag of caramels! Linda grew too elderly and could not make the caramels anymore, so I had to keep up the tradition. It requires standing in front of the stove and stirring the caramel solution for a long while until it reaches temperature. I can do one batch a day, and there are four Gerdes children to make a batch of caramels for each, along with my grandkids, brother and sister – who all love the candy treats just as much as the Gerdes children and get their own batches. So, I end up cooking a batch every morning once the holiday season arrives, and wrapping the candies at night. The one saving grace to wrapping the candies, is that you can pop as many of them into your mouth during the process. I think I end up eating 5 or 6 during the nightly wrap!
Homemade Caramels
Equipment
- 1 large sauce pan light colored inside
- 1 silicon spatula
- 1 9×9 glass baking dish
- 1 piece of parchment paper
- 1 roll of wax paper
- 1 candy thermometer
Ingredients
- ¾ c light Karo corn syrup
- 2 c sugar
- 2 c heavy cream
- ½ c butter (one stick)
Instructions
- Prepare the baking dish by lining it with parchment paper. Make sure there is enough paper to go up the sides of the dish. Don't worry about how messy it looks, it's just there to keep the caramel from sticking to the glass pan.
- Put the cream in a large measuring cup. Cut the stick of butter into 6 pieces and add to the cream.
- Get ready to constantly stir until the caramels are poured into the glass baking dish. Don't have any distractions.
- Put the light corn syrup into the pan. Turn to medium heat.
- Add the sugar to the pan. Be careful to add it into the middle of the pan, avoiding the sides of the pan.
- Stir the sugar into the corn syrup, making sure to avoid sugar getting stuck to the sides of the pan. Just keep using the silicon spatula to wipe the sides of the pan as you stir.
- Keep stirring so that the sugar melts into the corn syrup and starts to boil. Stir the boiling solution constantly until it gets to be a slightly tan color.
- Add some butter and cream to the boiling solution. CAREFUL! This will steam up, but keep stirring! Add more butter and cream to the solution, stirring constantly until you have all the cream and butter added.
- Keep stirring and making sure that there is no build-up on the sides of the pan throughout the cooking process. After a while the solution will boil. When it comes to a boil, add the candy thermometer, and keep stirring until the temperature reaches 250 degrees. The candy solution will become thicker as it gets closer to 250 and it will appear to come off the sides of the pan as you stir it.
- Remove from the heat immediately when it reaches temperature and pour it into the 9×9 parchment lined glass dish.
- Cool the caramel block for about 4 hours or until it is hard when you try to press down on it with your finger.
- Cut pieces of wax paper into 4×5 pieces. I tend to take a sheet of wax paper about 5 inches in length, cut it off the roll, and then cut the sheet into three equal pieces.
- Remove the hardened caramel from the refrigerator. Grab the ends of the parchment paper and lift up the block, paper and all, and put on a cutting board. Cut long strips of the block about 1 inch in width, and then cut the strip into about 9-10 square pieces. Wrap each piece in the wax paper like a candy – put the square on the piece of wax paper, roll the wax paper around it, grab both ends and twist.