Caramel

I don't know if I've ever said this but I love baking.  Quality baking comes from making everything from scratch with quality ingredients.  If you use store bought products you can taste the chemicals in the products giving it a bitter or artificial sweetened flavor.  After eating quality products you will taste the difference.  If you're going to take the time to bake something from scratch don't ruin it by cutting corners and using a store bought product that you will use as a compliment to your cupcake.  Let's clarify this a little.  Store bought products that are easy to make at home.  Obviously, jelly isn't the easiest to do and especially not the easiest to do when all the right fruit are out of season, peanut butter, while easy, has quality brands easily available out there.  

Caramel - I love love love caramel!  My favorite chocolate product is chocolate covered caramels!  Yum yum yum!!  At first when I started making the salted caramel cupcakes I used a store bought caramel and added the sea salt.  I thought, eh whatever.  Well, while the cupcake tasted good - it wasn't WOW!                                                                          

One of the best things to invest in when making a 'salted' product is the salt.  There are so many different types of salt and salt processing to choose from.  Go to a gourmet shop that contains a lot of different Fleur de sel products.  Taste them!  You would be surprised at how delicious they are.  SALT!  Of all things that could possibly be delicious plain.  The salt we found is a Hervey kind from Brittany.  There are processes that takes the salt from different seas and extract it under water (which is s gray color - while good - could cause people to wonder why there is a gray colored salt on a product)  It really does make a difference.  This salt is $15 a jar.  Well worth it.

  There are a lot of caramel recipes that you can use. The one I found uses both heavy cream and sour cream. This is one thing my husband and I like making together which makes it much easier to pour and whisk at the same time!!

With a quality heavy cream add the salt to the pan on med-low heat stir the two ingredients until the salt dissolves. 

With the mixture of water, sugar, corn syrup in a pan, turn on high heat and bring to a boil while stirring continuously (I found that out this weekend too!!) or it can burn quite easily.

Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan.

Boil boil boil.  Stir stir stir.  It takes approximately 10 minutes to reach the appropriate temperature.

 Still boiling.  My husband and I take turns, usually I'm doing other things and he helps me keep an eye on the caramel.  We made this three times this weekend!  The second time he wasn't around and that's when it burned when I wasn't looking!

 When I make the caramel I find it best to use three different pans.  The reason is because the pans hold the heat so well it has a tendency to burn even though you've taken it off the heat.  What I've done here is heat the cream in one, make the caramel in the other, and warm the empty pan so it doesn't shock the caramel when you pour it into a cold pan.  It stops it from continuing to cook. 

 According the recipe you're suppose to cook the sugar mixture to 350 degrees, but that is such a fine fine line that even the slightest degree over could start to develop a burnt taste.  Nothing more frustrating than that! 

Here we are pouring the sugar mixture into the warmed empty pan.

After the sugar syrup cools a minute you want to very gently pour the salted cream into the sugar mixture SLOWLY while whisking.  It will bubble up and if you're not careful it will bubble over.  This is where my husband and I work so well as a team.

After the cream and sugar mixture are whisked together, the next step is adding the sour cream. 

Delicious!

I have a wonderful pan that fits 24 cupcakes at a time.  Otherwise it wouldn't really be practical to only bake 12 at a time. 

After I pour the caramel into a squeeze container similar to a ketchup bottle, I inject the caramel into the center of the cupcakes.  I tried cutting the center out of each cupcake but I don't know if that really adds anything more to the cupcake than doing it this way.  Squeeze enough to just before the cupcake cracks.

Wait until the cupcake is cool enough, otherwise the caramel will stay heated and flow over top.  Yum yum yum!!

  After the icing is applied, drizzle with caramel and sprinkle with more of that delicious salt!!