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Coffee Caramels
Coffee caramels are prepared same as vanilla caramels, only adding a gill strongly made coffee at beginning of operation.
This is a variation entry, not a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have a vanilla caramel formula in hand (sugar, cream or milk, butter, glucose or corn syrup, boiled to the firm-ball stage). What it really tells you is where the coffee goes, and that matters more than it sounds.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. In a typical caramel batch that is a substantial addition of liquid, not a flavouring dash.
- "Strongly made coffee"A very concentrated brew, well beyond drinking strength. Weak coffee at this volume dilutes the caramel without flavouring it.
- Why "at beginning of operation"The coffee goes in with the sugar and cream so the extra water boils off as the syrup climbs to temperature. Coffee stirred in at the end, as you would vanilla extract, is likely to soften the finished candy and keep it from setting properly.
- Expect a longer boilThe added liquid lengthens the cooking. Go by temperature rather than any clock time in the base recipe: 245-250F for a chewy caramel that holds its shape, a few degrees lower for a softer one.
- Vanilla still belongs in itCoffee caramels are not coffee instead of vanilla. Keep whatever vanilla the base recipe calls for and add it off the heat; it rounds the coffee's bitterness.
- Watch for scorchingCoffee darkens the syrup early, so you lose the colour cue cooks rely on to judge doneness. Use a heavy pan, a thermometer, and stir the bottom as the mixture thickens.
- Yield and finishingLet it set at room temperature for several hours, not in the refrigerator, then cut with an oiled knife and wrap each piece in waxed paper to stop them fusing.
History: Caramels of this sort belong to the era when American candy-making moved from the confectioner's marble slab into the home kitchen, helped along by cheap commercial glucose in the later nineteenth century. Books of this period routinely print one full caramel recipe and then a run of one-line variants instructing the cook to add chocolate, nuts, or coffee rather than repeating the whole method, which is why this entry reads as a footnote. Coffee was an established confectionery flavour by then, and such sweets would have been made with strong brewed coffee rather than an extract, since instant coffee powders were not yet a normal pantry item.