Chocolate salted caramels

This recipe is incredible..

I am not the hugest dark chocolate fan, but these little dark chocolate caramels, covered in sea salt are honestly to die for!

Straight from the fridge, these little sweets melt in the mouth and have the most amazing smooth consistency.

Each caramel is so well balanced – with creaminess from the caramel, slight bitterness from the dark chocolate, and saltiness in the form of Cornish sea salt, mmm… ❤
Earlier yesterday, I first attempted to make a batch of these caramels using a different recipe from the Mast brothers. As indicated, the recipe doesn’t always work for everyone, and sadly it didn’t for me.

Still on my quest to make some sort of confectionary, I came across this recipe from smitten kitchen.com. Unlike the recipe from the Mast brothers, this recipe requires you to make a chocolate ganache, which is added to a sugar syrup and finally butter is incorporated. In comparison, the Mast brother’s recipe instructs you to add chocolate to a bubbling hot sugar-cream mixture – this is where all my problems were encountered 😦 As soon as the chocolate was added, the butterfat separated from the rest of the mix and nothing could be done to save my caramel at this point!
This recipe is extremely straight forward, and fairly quick!

It can be found on the smitten kitchen website, or below where I have converted it into english measurements:

Ingredients: (I halved the original recipe to make 32 caramels, instead of 64)

• 1 cup of double cream
• 150g of dark chocolate
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 tbsp. golden syrup (the recipe calls for corn syrup, but I used golden syrup as a substitute which worked fine, yay!)
• 30ml water
• pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter
• sea salt for sprinkling – I used Cornish sea salt
• Sugar thermometer

Method:

Start by lining a small baking tin (4x4cm to 6x6cm square) with greaseproof paper. I like to grease by greaseproof with butter to make sure nothing sticks.

Next, in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water, add the cream and chopped up dark chocolate. Stir until the chocolate melts into the cream and a ganache is formed. Set aside.  In a large saucepan, bring the golden syrup, water, salt and sugar to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Leave the pan on the hob for abut 10 mins until the mixture starts to turn golden (this was hard to see because of the colour of the golden syrup – I left mine on the hob for about 7 mins – thick bubbles and a slightly deeper amber colour should be seen).

Carefully tilt the pan and add the slightly cooled chocolate ganache.

Place a sugar thermometer in the centre of the pan, and continue to boil over a medium-high heat for about 10 more minutes, until you reach 120-125 °C on the thermometer – STIRRING ALL THE TIME 🙂  If you don’t have a thermometer, leave the pan on the hob for around 10 mins, and you should notice the mixture becoming a lot thicker. At this point, add in the butter and stir until a glossy fudgey caramel mixture is formed, yum.

Pour the caramel into your baking tin, and leave to set at room temperature for 5-10 mins. Sprinkle sea salt on top, and leave for a couple of hours to set (I set mine in the fridge).

I found the best way to eat these luscious little caramels was straight from the fridge (if you can resist not eating the whole batch straight away)

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did! ❤

Sofia xxxxxx