Every year, my boss has a Super Bowl party, and every year, he'll bring the left over treats into the shop since they always get enough to feed a small army. One of the left overs this year was a bacon caramel brownie that was devoured in about 10 minutes. I guess the reason there were any left overs in the first place was because they'd gotten 2 - I think. At any rate, everyone raved about them so much that I was galvanized to make another attempt.
I did some snooping around, looking up caramel recipes and reading instructions. After finally settling on a recipe, I made my decisions about what I was going to use in place of the butter and cream, and then I started.
Having had such good success with the MimicCream, I chose that as the cream replacement, and my go-to for butter is the soy free version of Earth Balance. Basically, all of your ingredients (with the exception of the vanilla) go into your pot, you bring it to a boil, and then after 30-45 minutes at a low boil, it should reach about 248 degrees Farenheit which is also the hard ball stage. At this point you take it off the heat, stir in your vanilla and pour it into your lined/oiled tin to cool and harden. Simple, right? Well, mostly...
See, it never Got to 248 degrees Farenheit. After about an hour of low boil it changed colour as the recipe said it would, and it had achieved a hard ball when dropped into cold water, but no mater what I did, my candy thermometer indicated that it just wasn't hotter than 240. I think at one point, it even got colder! However, as I'd gotten a hard ball, I took it off the heat, added my vanilla and poured it into my parchement paper lined pan to cool. That part went well.
Once it was cold enough to cut into squares, I got a good taste of it. Sweet, rich, sticky and nutty. Nutty? Right; the MimicCream is almond and cashew nut based, and after cooking it long enough to amalgamate it and other things into caramel, the nut flavours really came through. More so than I actually enjoy.
We covered some pieces with chocolate and decided that these will make great turtles (though the next time I'll cook it less so that the caramel is actually a little runnier) and used some more to attempt the caramel brownies. Those were good! Getting a nut flavour in a brownie is something that you can almost expect, so that was ok. Still, I wasn't completely happy as I need to adjust the cooking time to take the caramel in the brownie batter into account, and I can't get over the flavour of the caramel to truly enjoy it. Nevertheless, I have a lot of volunteers for the next batch, and hope to get this right soon!
Back to the kitchen I go. Isn't life rough?! = )
No comments:
Post a Comment