This month on Culinate, I’m getting sweet on you:
> But caramel is nothing more than melted sugar heated until it browns. It’s actually quite easy to make, and it’s versatile, inexpensive, and fun. Want to impress your guests? You can crack open a $100 jar of caviar — or caramelize a few cents’ worth of sugar and serve homemade caramel sauce.
I made some last night and it was delicious, except it got a little too chewy/hard/stringy on ice cream. Do you think if I added more cream, it would stay more liquidy? Or did I cook it too long? I’ve made caramel before, but I think that was easier than my other recipe.
Since the last 27 recipes of yours I’ve tried have called for cream, I’m curious: do you keep it on hand all the time?
It’s funny you ask, since a couple months ago Laurie said, “We should always keep cream in the house.” It’s so versatile and tasty, why not? I don’t actually use it in everything; it just seems that way.
More cream–or water–will make your caramel softer. If you cook it too long it will taste burnt.
We always seemed to not have cream or buttermilk on hand, and they’re great for quick baking, so now we’ve made those regular grocery items. I think my comment was inspired by the Cornmeal Biscuits in The Quick Recipe (Cook’s Illustrated book), which may be my favorite biscuit; they’re certainly the easiest. I’ve always liked the idea of cream biscuits (easier than mixing in butter), but never found them to have much flavor until I tried the Cornmeal Biscuits. We’ve also really enjoyed the muffin recipes in TQR (banana, bran, gingerbread, and pumpkin), all of which use buttermilk and are really good.
Apparently cream is evil:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/349226_goodfoodgonebad30.html
I can’t wait until Matthew reads the line,
“If you must cook with bacon, use turkey bacon or Canadian bacon.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
“not many people would make the effort to make mushroom soup regularly”–seriously, I don’t know when I last heard anything from a nutritionist that WASN’T condescending or assumption-making.
Yeah, what are you, Wendy, some kind of yuppie?