#9 Vanilla Bean Caramel (Sauce) with Fleur de Sel

For as long as I have been baking, when ever I thought about making candy I would always assume that it was the most challenging thing ever so I never tried it. After hearing about my boyfriends younger brother making caramel and then watching my sister-in-law work with it while they visited for the holidays, I knew I needed to step up my game a little bit.

I found this recipe on this amazing blog Annie Eats, which is run by this truly outstanding woman who has a full time job as a resident physician, has one kid with another on the way and still makes time to bake/cook and maintain her blog. Anyways, I’ve looked at this recipe for a few weeks and finally decided to try it. I ordered Fleur de Sel on amazon, pricy stuff I might add, and took advantage of the giant bag of vanilla beans my sister-in-law gave to me.

It started out great, but in the end my caramels never decided to get their act together and get hard. So I accidentally made caramel sauce, which is really good, but not what I was intending to make :). A few things could have gone wrong but I have a feeling it’s my candy thermometer. I brought it up to the temperature it called for in the recipe, but after reading through a few comments of other peoples mistakes, my thermometer might be a little off. Or maybe I just messed it up completely because I was so intimidated by candy, we’ll never know 🙂 But for now, lets blame it on the thermometer.

I also accidentally left my camera’s ISO setting on 3200 while I was taking pictures inside so my pictures turned out awful.

This is the special salt for this recipe, Fleur De Sel. I tried a little bit and it is some salty salt my friends, but it melts instantly in your mouth.

All the ingredients, very simple!

In a small pan, you melt down and bring to a boil the cream, butter, vanilla extract, vanilla bean seeds, pods, and fleur de sel.

In a bigger pan, bring to boil the sugar, corn syrup and water.

The next part I couldn’t get pictures of because it all happened really fast. Basically after this sugar mixture turns a caramel light golden color, you pour the cooled cream mixture into the sugar mixture. After that, you put in the candy thermometer and keep an eye on it, while you stir it, and bring it up to the correct temperature.

After the cooking is done, you pour it into a pan where it SHOULD set up and get hard. After about 30 minutes you sprinkle the Fleur de Sel on top and continue to let it harden.

I took a picture the day after of my caramel sauce to post up here but I come to find that almost all of it is gone! So even if your caramel doesn’t work out either, its damn good caramel sauce!

Caramel Sauce!

This sauce is great on ice cream! And maybe some cupcakes 😉 Stay tuned for that.

-Madeline-