Caramel is How to make your own caramel

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Caramel is a delight for adults and children. Sweet, tasty, on a stick and without, well, how can you be afraid, even despite the harm to your teeth. And the best part is that caramel can be easily made at home with regular sugar.

For cooking, you just need to choose the right dishes, prepare the necessary ingredients and delight everyone with sweetness without artificial additives and dyes.

What is caramel? Product Ingredients

This sweet word is known to many since childhood. Caramel is burnt sugar, as they say in the common people. Yes, this is nothing but a sweet candy obtained by melting sugar. But there are differences in the composition between homemade and industrial caramel. In the process of preparing the second, artificial dyes, chemical thickeners, and flavors are added to it.

In the preparation of homemade treats, all these chemicals are excluded. The main ingredients are sugar, water, citric acid or vinegar. But, in addition to this, you can add:

• nuts;
• candied fruits and dried fruits;
• fruit pieces;
• coconut flakes, etc.

Caramel is not only harmful to the teeth, but also a blow to the waist if eaten in excess.

But one small candy will not harm, only pleasure. As for the calorie content of caramel, there are 362 kcal per 100 grams of this product. Although who would gobble up 100 grams of goodies at a time or a day?

Types of caramel

Caramel happens:

• dry, in the form of lollipops;
• soft or semi-hard, which can be used as an addition to other desserts;
• filled caramel, which is more difficult to prepare, as its outer shell is candy caramel, and inside is a liquid filling of any flavor.

Easier to make candy and mild sweetness at home.

Basic cooking principles

One of the main principles of making homemade sweets is the rejection of artificial additives.

Caramel is cooked very quickly, so before cooking it, you need to prepare everything in advance, and do not be distracted from the process itself, otherwise the sweetness will burn.

If melted sugar gets on the dishes during cooking, it should be soaked immediately, as it will be more difficult to clean later.

Preparations

Before you make caramel yourself, you need to foresee and prepare everything.

1. Forcaramel, cane sugar is ideal, since it was from it that the first sweet was prepared. And also it is he althier than beetroot, and it gives a pleasant spiciness to the finished caramel.
2. You need to cook sugar over low heat so that it does not burn.
3. For your own safety, wear gloves as burnt sugar can cause burns if it comes in contact with your skin.
4. Suitable cookware - with a thick bottom (cast iron pan or aluminum pan).

Cooking dry caramel at home

This recipe is for beginners because it's easy. To make fragrant lollipops, you will need the following ingredients:

• 200 grams of sugar;
• 60ml water;
• a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice.

From dishes:

• deep pot or pan;
• deep plate;
• lollipop molds, many use teaspoons, spoons must be oiled in advance.

Cooking process:

1. Pour cool water into a plate.
2. Pour 60 ml of water into the pan, put on fire. Fall asleep sugar.
3. As soon as the sugar begins to melt, it is stirred.
4. Add lemon juice or vinegar to the resulting sugar syrup.
5. As soon as the sugar becomes liquid, buttered spoons are dipped into it and filled with caramel.
6. The filled spoon is quickly immersed in a plate of water for 7-10 seconds, and then transferred to a dry towel.
7. Fill all forms in this way untilthe liquid in the pot will not run out.

In the process of melting sugar, you can add herbal extracts, cream or berry juice to it. Thus, the output will be cough drops, milk or fruit candies. There are also benefits of caramel.

Homemade soft caramel

Soft caramel is delicious both on its own and as an addition to cakes and pastries.

It is prepared from:

• 300 grams of sugar;
• fat cream or sour cream - 335 grams;
• s alted butter - 70 grams.

Caramel recipe step by step:

1. All 300 grams of sugar must be divided into 6 equal servings, that is, 50 grams each.
2. Put a pot with a thick bottom on the fire. Pour the first portion of sugar into it. As soon as it melts, add the second portion. Do not stir.
3. Thus, all servings of sugar are introduced into the pan. Do not interfere with this.
4. Cream or sour cream put separately on the fire to heat up, but do not boil.
5. As soon as the sugar turns a clear amber color, it is removed from the stove, butter is added to it and cream is slowly poured. Now you can stir everything until smooth.
6. Then the pot with the viscous mass is sent back to the stove and simmered over low heat for another 6 minutes.
7. After time, soft caramel is removed in the refrigerator for at least a day.
8. When you take out the caramel the next day, you can eat it with a spoon, add it to dessert, or cut it into cubes and eat it in the form of soft toffee.

Lollipops

Who doesn't know caramel on a stick? Not modern Chupa Chups, but caramel on a wooden stick, often in the form of cockerels or bunnies. The taste of childhood, not otherwise.

This delicacy is easy to prepare at home, especially since complex and hard-to-find ingredients are not required. And you also need to prepare cockerel molds (optional) and be sure to use wooden sticks, you can use toothpicks.

Berry juice can be used as a natural dye, or special food coloring can be added.

To make lollipops, you will need the same list of ingredients as for stickless lollipops. The list is in the first recipe.

The preparation is the same, but there are some nuances associated with inserting the stick into the lollipop.

1. As soon as the caramel is cooked on the stove, it is removed from the fire.
2. Quickly spread parchment paper on the table, grease it with vegetable oil.
3. Using a spoon, pour caramel onto paper in a thin stream, giving the desired shape. And you can lay out the finished form on paper (the same cockerel) and pour caramel into it. There should be several lollipops in a row on the parchment.
4. Let them cool down a little, literally a few seconds, and then carefully insert the sticks into them. To make the sticks go in faster, they need to be inserted in a rotating motion (as in a spiral).
5. The lollipops are left in this form until they cool completely.

Recipe for honeycaramel

Sugar-sweet honey-sugar pleasure in one small caramel will cause a real delight. It is possible to prepare such a delicacy at home from:

• sugar - 150 grams;
• melted honey - 200 grams.

You will also need a silicone mat.

Cooking steps:

1. The listed ingredients are poured into a small saucepan with a thick bottom.
2. Cook them over high heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. In this case, it is necessary to stir the mixture with a wooden spoon.
3. After melting the sugar, the fire is removed to moderate and the syrup is boiled down to 160 ° C, that is, until the mixture boils and becomes liquid.
4. The hot caramel mixture is poured onto the silicone mat. Let it cool a little and thicken.
5. Using the same rug, they roll a lump out of it.
6. As soon as the caramel cools down to be able to pick it up, you need to roll a thick tourniquet out of it. If it still burns your hands during the formation process, you should wear thick rubber gloves.
7. If there is a desire to get mother-of-pearl-colored caramels, the tourniquet is stretched several times and folded in half. If this is not done, the color of the lollipops will be transparent.
8. The tourniquet is cut into small portions with a knife.

Conclusion

Caramel is a great way to pamper loved ones, especially children. It is prepared simply, the ingredients require the simplest, but it turns out attractively tasty. Various additives in the form of nuts or fruit juicesmake caramel even tastier.

If you want something sweet, but there is nothing at home, then in a few minutes cook sugar candies that will quench your thirst for sweets. But remember, caramel is also bad for your teeth, in excess, of course.