Posted on: Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Dressing it up with caramel

• Show you care with caramel creations

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Caramel sauce can be flavored with fruit, as in this sauce laced with raspberry puree, which Chef Mavro pastry cook Susan Gilhooly drizzled over cheesecake. Photos by Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser Sweet varieties Caramel: cooked sugar, color ranging from blond to brown. A range of confections, from brittles to sauces and candies, begins with the caramelizing process. Dulce de leche: variously defined as "milk jam" or "caramelized milk." Made by slowly cooking milk and sugar or sweetened condensed milk. Popular throughout Latin America as a spread,filling or ingredient in many confections. Butterscotch: The flavor created by the combination of butter and brown sugar in various sweets.

Step-by-step caramel sauce (and candy, too)

In a deep, heavy saucepan, combine sugar and corn syrup and bring to boil over medium heat, boiling steadily.

Heating the cream or milk to be used in caramel allows it to incorporate more readily. Add vanilla bean to infuse flavors.

Once the sugar/corn syrup mixture has attained the desired color, turn off heat and add cream. It will boil instantly.

Stir in room-temperature butter for a final rich flavor accent. Once butter is incorporated, the sauce is done.

Susan Gilhooly well remembers the day in culinary school when they learned to make caramel sauce. It was memorable because the delicious, silky sauce is so easy that it came out right the very first time — not always the case in the novice confectionary kitchen.

Gilhooly, 31, graduated from Kapi'olani Community College in 1996 and now is pastry cook at Chef Mavro, where she uses a version of that sauce to glaze a cloud-light cheesecake that's paired with a rich dessert wine from the French-Spanish border, Muscat de Rivesaltes.

Some evenings, she makes a raspberry caramel sauce, combining raspberry puree with cream in making the caramel. When raspberries aren't available — as often happens at this time of year — she sautés peeled and diced Yellow Delicious apples with a little butter and sugar and adds them to the caramel.

At home, she especially enjoys dressing up a plain cake or a dish of ice cream or fruit with a lacing of caramel sauce.

And that's typical of the way that caramel, though simple enough for a beginner to make, can lend richness and elegance to a dessert, a timely topic as Valentine's Day ticks toward us.

It's nothing but browned sugar, but caramel is one of the most versatile and utilitarian ingredients in a pastry chef's kitchen — and the home kitchen, too, according to Kara Bolduc, 21, the new pastry chef of Jackie's Kitchen restaurant in Ala Moana Center.

"Depending on how you cook it, you can make it darker or lighter in flavor and color. It can be sweet or quite bitter. You can do a lot of things with it," she said.

Bolduc, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York and a native of New Hampshire, pointed out that caramel — and its Latin American cousin dulce de leche — have been popping up a lot on dessert menus lately.

At Jackie's Kitchen, she makes a deep-fried banana lumpia encased with caramel and chocolate sauces. She also puts caramel in a hefty brownie ice cream sundae that's one of their hottest sellers. And you know that crunchy glaze on top of créme brulée? That's actually a caramel, too, she points out.

We think of caramel as a candy — those buttery, chewy squares you can make or buy. But pastry cooks think of caramel as both a technique and an ingredient. The technique of caramelizing involves exposing a food to controlled heat over time until the sugars in it melt and brown. The ingredient caramel (or caramel syrup) is created when sugar itself is the substance that's being melted and browned.

As Bolduc explained, you can begin dry — with just sugar and a pot over a medium flame. Depending on how high a temperature it reaches, how brown it's allowed to get and what other ingredients are added, this base ingredient can become anything from a crunchy sheet of candy to a luxurious thin sauce.

Wet caramel mixtures begin with sugar and water or sugar and corn syrup and proceed in the same manner — medium heat, careful watching and timing, and then the addition of other ingredients as called for in the recipe.

Gilhooly walked us through the technique for making a basic caramel sauce. There are one or two pitfalls in caramel-making: The sugar might crystallize and seize up, or you might burn it and have to start all over again. Pastry chefs have techniques for dealing with both issues.

Also, Bolduc points out, hot melted sugar can inflict burns the same way hot fat does, so care must be taken: Use large, heavy pots that aren't readily tipped over and can contain all ingredients without boiling over. Wear protective gloves. Turn off the heat and stand well back when combining ingredients with boiling caramel syrup, as it will foam up. Keep children and pets away.

1. The pan. Begin with a heavy, tall-sided saucepan. This is important because the straight sides help prevent the mixture from crystallizing. Additionally, pastry chefs keep a bowl of water and a pastry brush nearby and, after they have measured the sugar and any other ingredients into the pot, gently "paint" down the inside of the pot with water and continue to do so from time to time during cooking. This is again to prevent crystals from forming, because once sugar crystallizes in one spot, there's a chain reaction and the whole thing goes.

2. Cooking. Cook the sugar over medium heat. Don't stir, although you can gently rotate. The mixture will begin to boil and bubble in a very dramatic way so that it's filled with air bubbles, glossy and constantly moving.

3. Timing. Depending on the ingredients, it can take from 15 to 30 minutes for the sugar to begin to brown, but once it does, it goes from off-white to much too dark very quickly. Do not make caramel when you're doing anything else. Turn off the phone and stay in the kitchen within watching distance of the pot.

4. Temperature. If you're going to be adding cream, milk, butter or other ingredients, have them at room temperature or warmer so they incorporate more readily. Cut the butter into pats and leave them on the counter. Milk or cream should be heated.

Because Gilhooly uses vanilla beans in making her caramel sauce, she also heats the cream in order to infuse it with bean flavor, first scraping the seeds out of the bean, then throwing the seeds, and the bean pod as well, into the milk. She brings this just to a boil, then turns the heat as low as it will go until it's time to mix the milk with the sugar. The bean comes out before the cream is combined with the caramel syrup.

5. Boiling up. If your caramel recipe involves mixing other ingredients with hot caramel syrup, the mixture will boil up dramatically as soon as the two are combined. Just turn off the heat before you pour the ingredients in, be ready for this and don't worry, the boiling will stop.

• • •

Show you care with caramel creations

Susan Gilhooly, pastry cook at Chef Mavro, displays chocolate decorations that add a warm touch to her caramel-laced desserts.

Caramel — the nicest thing you can do to sugar — is the central flavor in many sweet and fairly simple recipes. Here are a few.

Caramel sauce is a great thing to learn how to make: It can elevate plain ice cream, a simple cake or a dish of plain or grilled fruit into a fancy dessert. It takes almost no time and can be prepared days ahead of time (store in airtight container in refrigerator).

This isn't the exact recipe that Chef Mavro restaurant pastry cook Susan Gilhooly prepared for us. Hers makes far more than the average householder could use in a month of Valentine's Days! But this one, from the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sun-Sentinel's test kitchen, uses almost the same ingredients in the same proportions (except for a little lemon juice to brighten the flavor and help stabilize the sauce).

Foolproof Caramel Sauce

• 1/3 cup water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon corn syrup
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

In a 3-quart heavy saucepan, combine water, sugar, lemon juice and corn syrup. Cook over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, until sugar dissolves and mixture comes to a boil.

Boil over medium to medium-high heat, without stirring, 6 to 7 minutes until a golden amber color. Remove from heat (take pot to sink). Meanwhile, microwave whipping cream about 1 1/2 minutes until boiling. Slowly and carefully whisk hot cream into corn syrup mixture (mixture will bubble vigorously) until blended.

Return pot to medium heat and whisk sauce a minute or two until smooth. Whisk in butter and vanilla. Cool to room temperature. Store in covered container in refrigerator until serving (reheat in microwave oven, if desired, to warm). Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

Per (1-tablespoon) serving: 82 calories, 55 percent calories from fat, 5 grams total fat, 17 milligrams cholesterol, 3 grams saturated fat, 0.20 grams protein, 9 grams carbohydrates, no fiber, 16 milligrams sodium.

Weigh the ingredients

If you're expecting a crowd and want to try Gilhooly's recipe, you have to weigh some of the ingredients on a kitchen scale. The proportions are: 20 ounces sugar, 1 pound corn syrup, 1 vanilla bean, 1 quart heavy cream, 1 cup butter (room temperature, cut into chunks).

Place the sugar and corn syrup in a pot and boil over medium heat until caramel-colored. Meanwhile, place the cream in a separate pot with the seeds of the vanilla bean and the bean itself and bring to a gentle boil. Turn heat down to low. Remove the vanilla bean. Turn off the heat under the caramel syrup, pour in the warm milk (it will foam up, so be careful of splatters). Add butter a chunk at a time. Stir until incorporated. May be used warm or held in refrigerator. Makes 6-8 cups.

Lavish layered butter cake

This old-fashioned recipe is for a lavish layered butter cake flavored with "burnt sugar" — caramel syrup — and frosted with a brown sugar caramel icing. It's from cooks.com, but originally from the Sasanqua Garden Club — and doesn't it sound like the kind of thing a proud garden club member would bring out at the end of a meeting?

If you can't face the thought of making a cake from scratch, make the burnt sugar as directed in the first paragraph of the recipe below, allow it cool, then stir it into boxed yellow-cake mix batter. Make the caramel frosting — or use the new caramel frosting in tubs from Betty Crocker, which is pretty good.

Burnt Sugar Cake with Caramel Frosting

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 eggs, separated
• 3 cups sifted cake flour
• 3 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• Caramel frosting (below)
• Pecan halves for garnish (optional)

Prepare three (9-inch) cake round cake layer pans, greasing and flouring them and lining them on the bottom with greased brown paper. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Make caramel syrup: Heat 1/2 cup sugar slowly in small, steep-sided saucepan, stirring constantly. When sugar is melted and begins to smoke, add boiling water, slowly stirring constantly (it will foam up, so be careful). Continue cooking until sugar is dissolved and mixture is reduced to 1/2 cup. Set aside to cool.

Make cake batter: Cream butter well, then add 1 cup sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and then egg yolks, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Stir in cooled caramel syrup. Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with milk, beating until smooth. Beat egg whites separately at high speed until stiff but not dry. Fold into mixture.

Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Remove from oven, let stand five minutes, then turn out on racks to cool.

Spread caramel frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake. Garnish with pecan halves.

Caramel Frosting

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 2/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• Few drops vanilla
• 3 cups confectioners' sugar

Mix butter, cream, brown sugar and salt in saucepan. Bring to boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, add vanilla, then gradually beat in confectioners' sugar to spreading consistency.

Give gooey gifts

A lovely Valentine's gift for a child to give out at school, or for an elder with memories of old-time homemade candies, is a batch of homemade caramel candy.

This basic recipe from Bruce

Weinstein's "The Ultimate Candy Book" makes a silky, chewy caramel candy that can be molded into charming shapes in those neat silicone molds available at craft and kitchen supply stores. Be sure to use a high-sided pot because the syrup will climb up the sides as it boils and bubbles on the way to becoming candy.

Caramel Candy

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter (plus more for greasing pan or mold)

Butter a 10-inch square pan or hard-candy molds. Set aside.

Combine all ingredients except butter in tall-sided, heavy saucepan. Place over medium heat and stir until sugar is dissolved.

Add butter and stir until it melts.

Bring heat to medium-high. Cook the mixture, without stirring, until the temperature reaches 248 degrees (firm ball stage). This will take some time — as long as 30 minutes or so.

Pan method: Pour into prepared pan and set aside to cool. If in pan, when the candy is cool enough to handle but still warm to the touch, use a flexible spatula to turn the candy out onto a cutting board in one piece. With a sharp knife, cut into 1-inch squares.

Mold method: Pour hot candy into heatproof measuring cup with handle and spout and pour into small molds, filling to the top. Allow candies to cool completely before popping them out of the mold — about 2 hours.

Wrap shaped candy in twists of waxed paper or plastic wrap. Will keep in airtight container at room temperature for a couple of weeks.

Variations:

• Almond — Add 1/2 teaspoon almond extract and 1/2 cup sliced almonds to finished candy in pan before pouring out.
• Coffee — Warm the cream and add 1 tablespoon instant espresso powder. Stir until dissolved and continue with recipe as above.
• Rum — Stir in 1 tablespoon rum extract before pouring hot caramel into pan or molds.
• Vanilla — Stir in 1 tablespoon vanilla extract before pouring hot caramel into pan or molds.

Per serving: 145 calories, 7 grams fat, 22 grams carbohydrate, 25 milligrams cholesterol, 53 milligrams sodium, 0.3 grams protein, 0 grams fiber.