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Chocolate Caramels
One cupful of molasses, one cupful of brown sugar, one cupful of milk, one-half cupful of grated chocolate, butter the size of an egg. Boil half an hour.
A plain molasses-and-milk caramel, the kind of candy made by feel before thermometers were common in home kitchens. The half-hour boil is an estimate; temperature is what actually decides whether you get chewy caramel or a sticky puddle.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockFirm-ball stage, 245-250F, gives a caramel that holds a cut square and still chews. Thirty minutes in a wide heavy pan may overshoot that; in a narrow one it may not reach it at all.
- Grated chocolateThis means unsweetened block chocolate, grated so it disperses in the syrup. Use 1/2 cup grated or about 2 oz chopped unsweetened baking chocolate; do not substitute cocoa powder, which lacks the cocoa butter that keeps the candy tender.
- Butter the size of an eggRoughly 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Add it near the end of the boil rather than at the start so it emulsifies into the finished syrup instead of separating out over a long cook.
- Milk scorchesMilk sugars and solids catch on the bottom well before the syrup reaches firm-ball. Use a heavy-bottomed pan at least three times the depth of the mixture, and stir steadily rather than leaving it to boil untouched.
- MolassesUse mild or full-flavour molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will dominate the chocolate. Sulphured and unsulphured both work here.
- Setting and cuttingPour into a buttered 8-inch square pan to a depth of about half an inch. Let it firm for 20-30 minutes, then score into squares while still warm; wait until cold and it will crack rather than cut.
- Yield and keepingAbout 60 to 70 small squares. Wrap each in waxed paper, or they will fuse into one mass within a day in humid weather.
Caramels were an American candy-shop staple by the 1880s and 1890s, and chocolate caramels were the premium version of them: milk, sugar and butter cooked down, with grated block chocolate stirred in for colour and depth. Their commercial importance is genuine rather than incidental, as caramel manufacture was where Milton Hershey made his money in Lancaster, Pennsylvania before he turned to chocolate bars. Home versions like this one belong to the same moment, when cheap brown sugar and molasses were kitchen staples and chocolate came as a hard unsweetened cake to be grated by hand. The instruction to "boil half an hour" marks the recipe as pre-thermometer: cooks judged the stage by dropping a bead of syrup into cold water and pressing it between finger and thumb, and a stated time was a rough reassurance rather than a rule.