bitterbutton

i’ve been wanting to make caramels for a while now.  i like caramel and i like things wrapped in wax paper.  actually, i probably like the old-fashioned wax wrappers for caramels more than the actual candy. i saw a recipe for pumpkin caramels on the food network’s website and thought it sounded delicious and also fun to dress for halloween.  so i tried it.

if you look at the recipe, it calls for brown sugar, maple syrup, and dark cork syrup–before i even started to cook, the color of the sugar was deep brown.  i was pretty diligent about following the recipe exactly, but it was hard to tell when the sugars started to caramelize with such a dark mixture.  so, i think i burned it a little.   when it started to scorch at the  bottom of the pan, i yanked it off the burner.  and i think i failed to get it to a hot enough temperature to solidfy it.  aka–when the caramel cooled–it was too soft to cut or shape.

even with the complete failure of the first batch, it smelled good enough while it was cooking/scorching that i wanted to try it again.  what i liked most about the flavor, too, was the pumpkin and the pumpkin pie spices.  it wasn’t really the dark brown sugar or dark corn syrup.  so i decided to use a more traditional cream caramel mixture (sugar, water, butter, cream, vanillla) with added pumpkin and spice.

and all was good.

to combine the two recipes, i added the spices and pumpkin puree in the first to the cream used in the second recipe.  the resulting candy is totally delicious–it’s slightly spicy (almost like a mild ginger chew) and you can clearly taste the pumpkin.  it’s also very pretty, with the green seeds and the deep orange tinted caramel. 

earlier in the week, knowing i wanted to make these, i bought orange, black and white paper tape at a craft store, and used a fancy hole-punch on strips of parchment paper. when it came to cutting the pieces of candy, i was seriously torn between caramel squares and oblong pieces.  it was a time-consuming and soul-searching endeavor to make the decision.  hours later, rectangles won.  i wrapped each in wax paper, and then wrapped it again in a small piece of tape and a scrap of parchment.  i tried some tin foil on some, too.  i wrapped about half of them like that and then got tired of pretending to be an assembly line. 

i left half of the wax paper wrappers plain and put them in a bowl with some licorice twists.  or wolverine claws or something, since it’s halloween and all.

then i took their picture with the world’s most amazing squash! it looks just like a cartoon toadstool! it’s two-toned!  i liked it enough to pack it in my suitcase and take it to new york city as checked baggage.

this recipe was really satisfying to make–i had a problem using the original recipe and came up with a way to solve it.  it felt like a tiny confectionary victory.  it also gave me hope for making other flavored caramels and a reason to finally use my fancy hole-punch.