Fleur de Sel Caramels Enrobed in Bittersweet Chocolate

... garnished with fleur de sel and caramelized sugar.

I've been making candy this week, inspired by this new blog I'm reading, Sweet Napa. If you want to see some awesome confections, head on over and get ready to drool.

I first attempted to mimic her Scotch Bar, a layer of chocolate ganache with single-malt scotch, then a layer of fleur de sel caramel (oh yeah, fleur de sel is a gray, coarse, moist french sea salt), semi-enrobed in bittersweet chocolate.

First of all, I left the 350ml bottle of 12-year Glenlivet in my car while I was at work, and I got into my car at the end of the day and the car smelled like a still. The bottle had gotten so hot that it blew out the cork, tearing off the foil in the process, and fell over, dumping most of the scotch all over my car. I had to drive with the windows down for a few days to avoid getting a headache!

Luckily there was still enough scotch in the bottle for the ganache, which I made with just cream and chocolate, no butter, so it was light and soft even when frozen.

Sadly, I then overcooked the caramel. I was cooking it over high heat, so it cooked down much faster than it was supposed to, and I was taken by surprise, rushed off to get a glass of cold water for the cold water test, and by the time I did all that, it was much too hot. Batch one hardened into toffee.

I made a second batch, since the caramel is the cheap part. It's the chocolate and scotch that were expensive. I stopped it early, at 245F, the beginning of soft ball, instead of the 248 the recipe called for, hoping I'd get a softer caramel closer to a sauce. Then I watched in horror as the thermometer continued to rise, off the heat, to over 250. I guess my thick-bottomed aluminum pans really retain a ton of heat, and they kept radiating for a while.

Those candies were alright. The caramel was much too hard, but not quite toffee. I dipped them in melted chocolate to attempt that semi-enrobing, but the condensation off the ganache caused the chocolate to seize and it became kind of a messy affair. They didn't look terribly professional by the end. (As Nina from Sweet Napa said, "Well, rustic happens.")

I had enough cream left for one more batch of caramel, so for my friend Kate's birthday, I decided to give it one last shot. This time I stopped the caramel at 245F and had a pan of ice water ready to dunk it into, and it is a perfect consistency, not overly chewy but not quite liquid at room temperature. I melted the chocolate and this time poured it over the caramels, sitting on a cooling rack over a baking sheet, and after that cooled, I painted the chocolate foot on each with a pastry brush. I dusted the top of them with a little extra fleur de sel (I'm something of a salt addict. I get it from my mother.) And then to finish it off, I melted some dry white sugar in a saucepan, let it caramelize to a nice light golden color, poured it over a baking sheet, and let it run down the side so it made a thin sheet. When it cooled, I cracked it up into slivers and drove them into the tops of the caramels as a neat little garnish. And they add a nice candy crunch, too.

I'll post the recipe for the caramels here, but I'm just stealing it directly from Sweet Napa. But she copied it verbatim from Epicurious, where it was copied, verbatim, from Gourmet Magazine in 2004. I guess that makes it alright for me to use, then.

Fleur de Sel Caramels

• 1 cup heavy cream
  
• 5 tbs unsalted butter, cut into pieces
  
• 1 tsp fleur de sel
  
• 1.5 cups (300 grams) sugar
  
• 1/4 c corn syrup (BHS: Good stores sell corn syrup made without high-fructose syrup -- avoid Karo and use it!)
  
• 1/4 c water
  

Line bottom and sides of an 8″ square pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment.

Bring butter, cream, and salt to boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.

Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in 3-4 quart saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.

Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up) and simmer stirring frequently, until caramel registers 248 on a thermometer, 10-15 mins. Pour into baking pan and cool 2 hours. Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each in 4 inch square of wax paper, twisting 2 ends to close.

Makes about 40 candies.

Gourmet 2004