Candy Making 101: Soft Caramels

Hope everyone had a great weekend! One of the "to-do's" for myself this weekend was to attempt to make soft caramel candies. I have seen beautiful pictures and read recipes for them on other blogs and I wanted to give them a try. Candy isn't the easiest venture in the kitchen, so I was a little nervous - but luckily, they turned out delicious, and truly weren't that hard to make. It's just a pretty quick process and you have to watch over everything very carefully. Candy making 101 = success! I packaged them up in some cute boxes to hand out to a few friends tomorrow as a Valentine's treat.

Recipe: Soft Caramel Candies 

Source: Baked Explorations (another amazing baking book - check it out!) 

Ingredients

2 cups light corn syrup

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2 cups heavy cream

2/3 cup condensed milk

1 stick of unsalted butter

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon sea salt or fleur de sel

*You'll also need a candy thermometer

Directions

1. Spray 9-inch square baking pan with nonstick spray and line with foil. Lightly coat the foil with nonstick spray

2. In a medium saucepan, stir together the corn syrup and sugars along with 1/4 cup water. Set saucepan on low heat and stir until sugar is dissolved. Once the sugar is dissolved, clip the candy thermometer on the side on the pan. Turn heat to medium-high and let temperature get to 240-245 degrees F. (about 7 minutes) Do not let the heat exceed 250. 

3. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan stir together cream and condensed milk and set on medium heat. Do not let it boil. 

4. Once the sugar mixture gets to desired temperature and turns an amber color, remove it from the heat and stir in the butter and milk mixture until completely combine. Place the pan back on medium and bring mixture back to 245-250 degrees F. 

5. Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla and salt. Pour mixture into prepared pan. Allow candy to set about 8 hours or overnight. 

6. Cut and wrap the caramels with parchment paper. They will store up to 10 days in airtight container at room temperature.