Home › Candies › Cocoanut Caramels
Cocoanut Caramels
1 cupful desiccated cocoanut 2 tablespoonfuls glucose 1 lb. brown sugar 3/4 cupful Crisco 1 cupful milk 1 cupful cream 1 teaspoonful rose extract 1 teaspoonful almond extract 1/4 teaspoonful salt Soak cocoanut in milk for twenty minutes, then put it into a saucepan with sugar, glucose, salt, and one-third of the Crisco, add second third of Crisco when it forms heavy thread, or registers 230 degree F., add third piece of Crisco, cream and extracts, when it again reaches 230 degree F. When it reaches the hard ball stage or 250 degree F., turn at once into a Criscoed tin. Cut when half cold. When all are cut, wrap each caramel in waxed paper.
A straightforward stovetop caramel, complicated only by the instruction to add the fat in three stages and by the fact that the thermometer has to pass 230F twice before the final cook. Read the sequence through before you light the burner.
- Glucose is corn syrupThe "glucose" of the candy trade is what a supermarket sells as light corn syrup. Two tablespoons is there purely to interfere with crystallisation, so do not leave it out and do not swap in honey, which browns faster.
- CriscoThis book was published to sell Crisco, so the shortening is named at every opportunity. Any solid vegetable shortening works; unsalted butter gives a better flavour, though it will make the caramels slightly softer and darker.
- The temperature sequenceYou reach 230F, add fat, cool the syrup, climb back to 230F, then carry on to 250F. Each cold addition drops the reading sharply, which is expected. A digital probe is worth more here than the thread and hard-ball tests, which are unreliable with this much dairy in the pan.
- Hard ball is firm, not chewy-soft250F gives a caramel you can cut cleanly and wrap. If you prefer the softer modern chew, stopping around 244-246F is the change to make, and the pieces will need to stay in their papers.
- ScorchingA cup each of milk and cream plus a pound of brown sugar will catch the moment it is neglected. Use a heavy pan with room to boil up, stir the bottom continuously with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula, and keep the heat moderate rather than high.
- Rose extractA full teaspoon of rose flavouring alongside a teaspoon of almond is assertive by current taste, and rose extracts vary widely in strength from brand to brand. Start with a quarter teaspoon of rose, taste the syrup off a cooled spoon, and add more if you want it.
- Desiccated coconutSold now as unsweetened desiccated or fine shredded coconut. The twenty-minute soak in milk is what keeps it from staying leathery in the finished sweet; sweetened flaked coconut will make the batch cloying.
- Pan and yield"A Criscoed tin" means a greased square pan; the recipe gives no size, but an 8-inch square would give pieces roughly three-quarters of an inch thick, on the order of 50 to 60 caramels. Score at half-cold as directed, since fully cooled caramel is too stiff to cut cleanly.
- Filed under EggsNo eggs -- Despite any section heading to the contrary, there are no eggs in this recipe.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening the company had introduced in 1911, and that commercial purpose is the likeliest reason a batch of coconut caramels calls for three separate additions of shortening where an older confectioner would simply have used butter. The candy itself belongs to the great age of American home candy-making, when reliable thermometers and cheap commercial glucose brought fudge, caramels and fondant out of the professional confectioner's shop and into domestic kitchens; glucose syrup was the trade's insurance against a grainy batch, and cookbooks of the period pass the tip along without much explanation. Rose and almond together as a flavouring pair is a distinctly Victorian and Edwardian taste, inherited from the older rose-water and orange-flower-water tradition, and it gave ground to plain vanilla in American kitchens over the following decades.