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Coffee Chocolate Caramels
1/3 cup very strong coffee 1/3 cup thin cream 2/3 cup molasses 3 cups dark brown sugar 3 ozs. bitter chocolate 6 tablespoons butter 1/3 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 cup chopped nuts Combine all the ingredients except the nut meats. Boil slowly until a little dropped in cold water makes a soft caramel ball (249 degrees F.). Stir in the nuts, beat for a few minutes, pour into a buttered pan or one lined with wax paper. Do not have the mixture more than 1 in. thick. When it begins to set, score off into squares.
A straightforward boiled sugar confection that needs a thermometer more than it needs technique. Everything goes into the pan at once, so the only real decisions are pan size and when to stop cooking.
- 249°F is the whole recipe249°F is the whole recipe -- that sits at the firm-ball end of the scale and gives a caramel that holds a square but yields to the teeth; the recipe's own name for the stage is a "soft caramel ball." Undercook it and the slab will be softer and inclined to slump; take it well past the mark and the candy turns hard and clings to the teeth.
- Bitter chocolateThis means unsweetened baking chocolate, 100 percent cacao — not bittersweet or dark eating chocolate, which carries its own sugar and would throw the batch sweet and soft. Three ounces is three standard squares.
- Thin creamPeriod usage for cream of roughly 18 to 20 percent fat: light or table cream. Half-and-half is the closest common substitute; heavy cream will work but makes a richer, slightly softer caramel.
- MolassesUse unsulphured mild or full-flavour molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and can taste scorched after a long boil.
- Pan and heatUse a heavy pan several times the volume of the mixture; molasses and cream foam up hard once the boil is established. Stir at the start to dissolve the sugar, then stir only enough to keep the bottom from catching, since dairy and molasses both scorch.
- The setting panAn 8-inch square pan gives roughly the one-inch depth called for. Butter the wax paper as well as the pan; unwaxed parchment or a silicone liner both work better than wax paper and release cleanly.
- Scoring and cuttingScore while the surface is still warm and pliable, then let the slab firm up for several hours before cutting through with an oiled knife. Wrap the squares individually in waxed paper or they will fuse back into one block.
- YieldRoughly 64 one-inch squares from an 8-inch pan, something over two pounds of candy.
- WeatherBoiled sugar candy picks up moisture from the air. On a humid day cook to the top of the range and store the wrapped squares in a tightly closed tin.
Caramels of this kind — sugar, molasses, butter and cream boiled together — were a staple of American home confectionery through the nineteenth century, when the cold-water test was the usual gauge in a domestic kitchen; the parenthetical 249°F here reflects the later availability of household candy thermometers, printed beside the old test rather than instead of it. Chocolate caramels were made commercially by American confectioners in the later nineteenth century, and caramel manufacture preceded the shift to milk chocolate at more than one firm.