Fleur de Sel Caramels and Pralines

Man, I hated chemistry.  Our teacher was seriously deranged and she called us all Twinkie, regardless of gender.  My lab partner would invariably get into the magnesium strips and light them up during experiment time, and each day I was truly frightened by the lack of vents in our classroom.   


Yet I love making candy and baking, both of which are made possible by chemistry.  The measurements have to be exact, the temperatures have to be spot on, timing is crucial.  Once you've got your finished product, there ain't no tweaking it.  But when you make a fantastic cake or wonderful candies from scratch, it's a pretty darn good feeling.      


One of my favorite French candies is Caramel au beurre salé : salty butter caramels.  They are made with French sea salt, also called Fleur de sel, and the fantastic butter local to the Brittany region.  These little gems are the perfect marriage of salty and sweet, thrown in with some cream for good measure.  I can never eat just one, and usually I devour all the candy I purchase for friends and family.  Sorry, guys, I just can't resist.  Postcards are just as good, right?

So what is Fleur de sel?  It's definitely salt, but it's not what you'll find on most tables.  Usually from Brittany in northwestern France, it is the top layer of sea salt that is scraped by hand from large salt pans.  The resulting crystals are much bigger than regular table salt, but also much finer.  My jar even touts it's "scents of minerals and violets" (it's true, it does smell like violets), and France has even named some of the larger Fleur de sel companies "Remarkable Taste Sites".  It is France, after all.


When I came across a recipe for Fleur de Sel Caramels, I instantly bookmarked the site and ran in my kitchen to be sure that I had everything I needed.  With a few little tweaks, I present to you the recipe:


Ingredients:
1 cup heavy cream
5 tbls. unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean pod, split lengthwise and scraped
1 1/4 tsp Fleur de sel, plus more for sprinkling
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water


Tools:
Small saucepan
Medium or Large heavy base pan
Candy Thermometer
Wooden Spoon
Parchment paper
8x8 baking pan
Wax paper, cut into squares


Prepare your baking pan first!  I've found that the caramels are usually slick enough that greasing the parchment paper doesn't seem like an important step- but I still butter it up, so I suggest that you do, as well.  I usually try to cut the parchment paper to make it fit the pan exactly, but so long as the paper is large enough to keep the caramel from oozing into the pan, there's no need to be Type A.


In a small saucepan, combine the cream, butter, vanilla extract, vanilla pod and scrapings, and salt.  Over medium-high heat, cook until the butter has melted, and then turn off the heat and set the mixture aside.


In a heavy-bottom pan (preferably not a dark pan, because you need to see the color change in the sugar mixture), combine sugar, corn syrup and water.  Give it a good stir to make sure everything is mingling well.   Blast it with the highest heat you can, and keep an eye on it.  Soon it will start to bubble and you'll be tempted to start quoting MacBeth, which is totally fine, so long as you don't start throwing magical bits into the sugar.  I can't stress enough how important it is to be patient at this point and that you absolutely cannot stir the sugar.  You can swirl the pot around, but no spoon should touch the liquid while it's cooking. 


Now is a good time to take the vanilla bean pods out of the cream mixture.  You definitely don't want those things in your caramels. 


Once the sugar soup turns medium/dark brown, carefully place your candy thermometer in the pot.  You may want to practice this step ahead of time.   Carefully pour the cream mixture into the sugar- seriously, be careful!  It will bubble up furiously and that stuff is wicked hot.  Once the cream is in the sugar, stir the entire mixture together and start monitoring the temperature.  My original recipe stated that I wanted the heat to reach 248 degrees, which on my thermometer is listed as "firm ball".  After playing around with the temperature, I found that the best is somewhere between soft and firm ball.  If it goes over firm ball, you're going to have a bunch of Werther's.  If it doesn't get to soft ball, it won't ever set but you could still use it like a sauce.  


Once you get the temperature up to the desired point, turn off the heat and pour the caramel mixture into the prepared pan.  Use the stirring spoon to spread out the mixture evenly.  Use a bit more Fleur de sel to sprinkle on top now, while the caramel is still hot.  If you wait too long, it won't stick.  


Now you wait for it to cool.  I usually find some way to test my caramels by pulling off a bit from the corner or peeling some from the side of the paper.  Quality control.


This is when you can start cutting up the wax paper.  I don't have a  lot of advice here because 1) my wax paper squares always end up as rectangles and most of them don't even wrap a single caramel and 2) the size of your squares depends on the size of your caramels.  For me, it's different every time.  


Once the caramels are cool you can peel the paper off and start to cut them into pieces.  I use a pizza cutter for this job, but a large kitchen knife works, too.  Wrap up your pieces in wax paper and voilà- des caramels au fleur de sel!

   
These little darlings are the fruits of my latest caramel endeavor- but as you can see, they aren't quite dark enough to be caramels.  They're pralines, actually.  Here's a story:


When Alex and I went to New Orleans in March, we kept seeing signs advertising pralines and other sugary treats.  I decided that pralines are a much better gift than beignets from Café du Monde (they don't really keep that well), so we purchased some on our last day.  Pralines in Europe are made of chocolate, but here in the States, and especially in the South, they're made of sugar and pecans.  When we got back home, I looked up a few recipes and noted that they were the same as my caramel recipe, just with less cooking time and chopped pecans added in.  


Last week, instead of using my usual silver pot, I used one of Alex's darker pots.  I couldn't tell what color the sugar mixture was becoming, and lacking patience, I put the cream mixture in too early.  Instead of a dark brown, caramelly color, I had a yellowish mixture.  "Alas," I thought, "my caramel aspirations have been dashed!"  The mix also took forever to set, and even when I cut them, they did not want to keep their semi-geometric shapes.  However, they tasted great!  We could see the little vanilla seeds in the mix!  After a few days, we discovered that the pralines had started to crystallize on the outside, which adds a whole new dimension to the soft texture.  


As I mentioned before with the parchment paper, there's no need to be Type A with this recipe at all.  Playing with the temperature and cooking times has yielded incredibly yummy results every time, and I've found that I can make caramels or pralines for every preference: hard, soft, chewy textures and intense or lighter flavors.  Give them a try, but be warned- you'll want to eat them all, so tell your friends and family that you are making them in advance.  That way, you have to give them some, and you won't feel like a complete glutton for eating 64 or so caramels.