Chewy, Soft, Honey-Sweetened Butter Caramels With NO Corn Syrup

Maybe you are snowed in with a little extra cream from holiday baking. Or you want to master the art of candy making. Perhaps you want to impress someone with the most delightful sweet bite at the end of a meal. Maybe you have some fantastic honey to highlight. I adapted this recipe because I had excess expiring Snowville cream I couldn't let go to waste. Caramels sounded good but I could find precious few recipes without corn syrup. I'm not rabidly against corn syrup but I don't choose to keep it around the house. I also wanted to practice candy-making. I am inconsistent because I typically become distracted with another chore or are trying to manage too many things in the kitchen at one time.

I started by making butter by hand to use up more of the cream. I waited patiently while sugar and butter roiled on the stove until the exact right temperature. I even remembered to let the hot sugar cool before tasting - no burnt tongue!

The results were worth the effort. These caramels are soft and chewy but not pull-your-fillings-out sticky. They smell floral from the honey and surround the taste buds with richness. Whatever your reason, you will not be sorry after you spend an evening cooking caramels.

Soft Caramels adapted from Chez Pim Makes: 40-50 1 1/2 inch squares Time: 30-50 minutes

1  1/2 cups granulated cane sugar 1/2 cup honey 1 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup sweet cream butter (make by shaking approximately 2 cups room-temperature cream in a quart jar and skimming butter from buttermilk or use unsalted butter) 1 generous pinch salt 1/4 cup finely chopped chocolate (optional) parchment paper

1. Mix sugar and honey in a heavy-bottomed pot. Heat over medium until the mixture is melting, swirling the pan to stir without using a utensil. Continue to cook until the sugars have caramelized to a deep brown.

2. Meanwhile, in another heavy-bottomed pot, slowly heat cream to a simmer.

3. Whisk butter in small pieces into the sugar and honey. When it is totally incorporated, whisk in the cream and salt as well.

4. Cook over medium heat until the mixture measures 255F with a candy thermometer. Do not stir. This may take up to 15 minutes of boiling - be patient and keep cool water nearby in case you accidentally touch a splatter.

5. Meanwhile, line a cookie sheet or baking dish with parchment paper.

6. When the candy reaches 255F, pour onto the parchment-lined pan. If using chocolate, sprinkle over the top after 10 minutes of cooling.

7. Allow the caramel to cool completely. Cut with a serrated steak knife and wrap in parchment squares or layer between parchment paper in a covered container. Consume within 7 days for best texture.

Real Mom Nutrition Weighs In On Fat

I am delighted to publish this guest post from Sally Kuzemchak, the registered dietitian behind Real Mom Nutrition. When she asked if I had anything specific in mind, I pounced with my standard question to nutritionists: 'What do you think about fat?' what follows is her reasoned and helpful response. An occupational hazard of being a dietitian is that people love to tell us we’re wrong. Anytime a research finding flies in the face of conventional nutrition wisdom—Beer is good for you! You can eat Twinkies all day and still lose weight!—we’re on the receiving end of a certain amount of “gotcha!”

And a report last year seemed to do just that: After analyzing 21 studies involving nearly 350,000 people, researchers concluded there was no proof that saturated fat raises the risk for heart disease or stroke.

So everything we’ve been telling people—buy low-fat milk, eat leaner cuts of meat, lay off the butter—is way off base? And the Wise Traditions folks (and even the Atkins dieters) are right on target? Well, at last year’s national meeting of the American Dietetic Association, even a panel of heavy hitters from Tufts University and Harvard Medical School couldn’t reach a conclusion.

But I can tell you this much: Most people’s fat intake isn’t coming from a grass-fed steak with a side of kale. It’s coming from McDonald’s cheeseburgers and DQ Blizzards and Olive Garden Alfredo sauce. And this highly processed diet also happens to be crammed full of sodium, nutrient-poor white flour, added sugar, food dyes, and preservatives. So could a higher-fat diet without all this extra junk be good you? Maybe, but I’m not ready to start drinking tall glasses of full-fat raw milk just yet.

While the research is still evolving—and the major players in the field are still fighting it out—here’s what I’ve settled on for myself and my family when it comes to fat:

*I buy local, organic eggs and wouldn’t dream of throwing the yolks down the drain to save fat grams (the yolk contains nutrients you won’t find in the white).

*I cook beef every week, from a share we bought of a grass-fed cow.

*I buy full-fat cheese because it tastes better. I bake with real butter.

*I buy conventional, skim milk because I like the taste (and because frankly, I’m not ready to make the financial leap to organic yet since we drink three gallons a week). If I did buy organic, I’d choose one or two-percent since it contains omega-3 fatty acids.

*I use liberal amounts of olive oil in cooking and eat nuts or nut butter every day.

*I limit processed meats. I love wonderful, delicious bacon as much as the next person, but it doesn’t have much nutritional value—and the American Institute for Cancer Research says any amount of processed meat raises cancer risk—so it’s an occasional splurge around here.

*I’m trying to cook more meatless meals. I’m convinced that eating a plant-based diet is important for health and the planet. Plus, it’s more economical. And my Paleo Diet-following friends will have to pry the (whole wheat) pasta out of my cold, dead hands.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic.

Menu Plan March 6, 2010

Ingredients and Inspirations:

• Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday = great food traditions! We care little for the various religious meanings; we adopt the recipes we love.
• Dine Originals Restaurant Week = date lunch and maybe dinner out
• Mashed potato leftovers from my sister's birthday dinner = potato pancake makings
• March Charcutepalooza challenge = home made cured brisket ready to cook this week

Monday - Lasagna roll ups with homemade tomato sauce, homemade ricotta from Snowville milk and fresh cooked spinach

Tuesday - Pumpkin pancakes with homemade butter milk and home grown & frozen pumpkin puree, king cake for dessert

Wednesday - Bowman & Landis turkey thighs, potato pancakes, frozen green beans

Thursday - dinner at friends

Friday - Rachel Ruben sandwiches, homemade applesauce, potato chips

Saturday - leftovers or dinner out at a Dine Originals restaurant

Sunday - family dinner/reception after cousin's Eagle Scout ceremony

The $175 Scrambled Egg Breakfast

Yesterday we collected the first egg from our backyard chickens!!  Our guess is that one of the Buff Orpingtons laid it, as they were particularly vocal yesterday.

Today we collected another egg.  This time we saw an Orpington in the nesting box so it surely came from her.

We scrambled the two smaller than average eggs together for breakfast and served it with homemade bread buttered with home shaken raw milk butter. It was the most delicious egg breakfast we have ever tasted!

At $175 (the price we paid so far for the chickens, coop, feed, and bedding), today's breakfast was also the most expensive we have ever consumed.  Our average cost per egg will obviously decrease over time.  The chickens should lay about 250 eggs per year.  At 33 cents per egg (the price I pay for farm fresh eggs), we will break even after egg number 530.  If the four girls lay every other day (an underestimate but it makes up for future cost of food we'll need to purchase), that's two eggs a day, or 265 days until we reach the tipping point.  265 days from now is approximately Thanksgiving.  And there you have an insight into how my strange calculating mind works.

I added this post to the Fight Back Fridays roundup, even though it is Sunday.  I'm just so pleased with our chickens!

Make it Yourself: Butter

We receive 1 1/2 gallons of un-homogenized whole milk every week from a local farmer.  Every week we skim the cream.  A few nips are used in coffee, but the rest is dedicated to butter. While at first I thought making butter might be a chore, I remain amazed every week at the transformation of liquid to solid.  I feel like the 15 minutes of shaking is a bit of exercise that burns some of the calories of the delicious butter.  It's actually kinda fun!

First, start with fresh skimmed cream.  We fill jars 1/3 of the way and allow to warm to room temperature.  Cold cream takes much more time to separate and makes less creamy butter in our experience.  For a different (yummier, in my opinion) flavor, make cultured cream by adding a Tbsp of yogurt and allow to culture in a warm place for 24 hours.

Next, start shaking.  After about 5 minutes the cream will fill most of the jar.

Now keep shaking until your arms feel like they might fall off.  They won't.

Soon magical yellow lumps form from the mass of white and you have butter!

Pour off the buttermilk and reserve for use in baking.  (Note: this is not the tangy buttermilk you might buy in the store for making biscuits.  The tangy kind is cultured.  You can make cultured buttermilk by adding starter.) This buttermilk is high in protein and low in fat, making it a great addition to pancakes, waffles, or muffins.

Now shake a minute or two more.  This helps get the last bit of buttermilk out of the butter and forms your butter into a neat pyramidal log.

Take the butter pyramid out of the jar and rinse under cold water until the water runs clear.  You may want to press the butter a few times and make sure all the buttermilk is out.  Butterfat will last for weeks unspoiled, but if buttermilk remains spoilage will occur much sooner.

The butter is warm now, so if you are interested in compound butter, now is the time to add herbs and spices.  Add a pinch of salt or leave plain unsalted for baking.  Spread into a bowl, butter dish or butter bell and there you have it!  Delicious butter!

Butter is not necessarily a healthy fat, but it is remarkably delicious.  Butter made at home from a healthy grass fed free range cow is arguably healthier than butter from the store because it has no hormones, no chemical residues, no colorants, and only the salt we add.  It still has plenty of saturated fat and calories which is why we use it sparingly.

Other than a slight health advantage, our favorite reason to make butter at home is to play with the flavors of cultured cream and salt.  When you start from cream, you can control the degree of cultured flavor and adjust seasonings as you need.

While not everyone faces our situation of receiving whole unhomogenized milk weekly, I encourage you to try making butter at least once.  You may find yourself adding homemade butter into your regular routine.