The Salted Caramel Cookbook
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About this ebook
Over 60 delicious recipes inspired by salted caramel.
Everyone’s favourite sweet and salty treat! Salted caramel is the perfect addition to almost any recipe – versatile, easy to make and use, and a fail-safe crowd pleaser. These tasty recipes, including old favourites, comforting classics, and a few surprising twists, will have you reaching for the jar of salted caramel time and time again!
Whether you’re pouring it over your favourite dessert, or incorporating it into decadent breakfasts, drinks, or snacks, salted caramel truly steals the show. This book will provide plenty of sweet inspiration and endless excuses to add this golden sauce to all your favourite treats.
Recipes include:
- Dulce de leche
- Salted caramel brownies
- Affogatto
- Salted caramel iced coffee
Heather Thomas
Heather Thomas is a health and cookery writer and editor. She is the author of The Halloumi Cookbook, The Nut Butter Cookbook, and The Avocado Cookbook (Ebury 2016). Heather has worked with many top chefs, nutritionists and women’s health organisations and charities, and has contributed to health and food magazines in the UK and the United States. She practises what she preaches and eats a very healthy diet and stays slim and fit.
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The Salted Caramel Cookbook - Heather Thomas
INTRODUCTION
Everyone is in love with salted caramel, even those among us who claim not to have a sweet tooth. It seems that the combination of bittersweet caramel and flavour-enhancing salt is irresistible.
We have long known that a hit of salt can balance and enhance sweet foods – hence the popularity of French toast or pancakes with crispy bacon and syrup or salty peanut butter cups. The subtle addition of a little salt to a sweet food stimulates our taste buds and creates an intensely pleasurable experience, as the perfect balance of these two flavour profiles literally doubles the taste sensation.
HISTORY AND ORIGINS
Salted caramel is a relatively recent culinary discovery and has only been around since the 1970s. It originated in Brittany in northwest France, which is famous for its superior dairy products. A French chocolatier named Henri Le Roux used the local demi-sel (slightly salted) butter to make a salted butter caramel and went on to register the caramel au beurre salé trademark (CBS).
Salted caramel continued to be a niche market until the 1990s, when it was popularized by the pâtissier Pierre Hermé’s macaroons (macarons) and, as they say, the rest is history. The trend quickly spread to the United States, where salted caramel was used as a flavouring for ice cream, chocolates, truffles and even Starbucks coffee. From its origins in rural France via elegant Parisian pâtisseries, it went on to become a popular item in American supermarkets and soon conquered the gastronomic world, acquiring cult status.
Consumers discovered that cooking sugar and butter with salt is gloriously addictive, and salted caramel is now added to a wide range of confectionery, chocolates, cakes, bakes, desserts, frozen foods and drinks.
WHAT IS CARAMEL?
Caramelization occurs when sugar is heated to 170°C (340°F), removing the water from the sugar and polymerizing it. The sugar molecules break down and the new compounds formed are a deep golden amber in colour with a rich, intensely sweet flavour.
MAKING SALTED CARAMEL
You need only four basic ingredients to make salted caramel at home: sugar, butter, cream and sea salt. It’s very important that the levels of sugar and salt are balanced correctly. Too much salt and the caramel will be inedible; too much sugar and it will be sickly sweet. In this case, less really is more and usually a large pinch or a teaspoon of salt is sufficient to trigger a positive reaction and a delicious result.
SALT: You can use all sorts of gourmet and artisan salts but simple sea salt flakes produce the best flavour and texture. Any flaked sea salt works well (avoid cheap table salt) but look especially for fleur de sel, sel de Guérande or Maldon sea salt flakes.
SUGAR: Always use white granulated or caster (superfine) sugar for making the caramel.
CREAM: Use full-fat double (heavy) cream or crème fraîche.
BUTTER: Use unsalted butter to make the caramel and add the sea salt separately to taste.
FLAVOURINGS: You can enhance the flavour of salted caramel by adding a few drops of vanilla, some melted chocolate or even chilli. Or try a spoonful of espresso coffee, Bailey’s or amaretto liqueur.
photograph of ingredients including butter and saltphotograph of jug with salted caramel scraped outRULES FOR MAKING CARAMEL
Always use a wide heavy-based saucepan (cast-iron is good), not a non-stick one.
Keep a close eye on the pan while making the caramel. If you miss seeing the melted sugar turn amber and don’t remove it from the heat immediately, it will catch and burn.
Be patient! It may take longer than you think for the sugar to caramelize, but hang on in there.
When making the caramel, don’t be tempted to keep stirring it. Just tilt the pan to move the sugar around and prevent it from burning. Keep stirring to a minimum.
STORING SALTED CARAMEL
Allow the salted caramel to cool to room temperature – it will solidify as it cools – then transfer it to a screw-top jar and store in the fridge for up to one month. Alternatively, it can be frozen in an airtight container for up to three months. Thaw in the fridge overnight, then warm it up in a pan on the hob before using.
VEGAN SALTED CARAMEL
In the Basic Recipes section you will find two dairy-free recipes for a vegan salted caramel. They are both easy to make, and the sauce made with the more traditional method (not Medjool dates) is indistinguishable from the original dairy version.
DULCE DE LECHE
In most of the recipes in this book, salted dulce de leche can be substituted for salted caramel sauce. Follow our simple recipe to make your own delicious, caramelized, rich, sweet and salty sauce. When it cooks, it is thicker than salted caramel sauce and can be used as a topping for cakes and waffles or as a dip for fruit and churros. Eat it spread on toast, English muffins, crêpes and pancakes, or swirl it into whipped cream, ice cream and cheesecake.
Basic RecipesSALTED CARAMEL SAUCE
This is the basic salted caramel sauce, the only one you’ll ever need for serving with desserts and pouring or drizzling over ice cream, sundaes, pancakes, waffles, crêpes, French toast, cookies and crumbles.
MAKES APPROX. 250G
(9OZ/1 CUP)
PREP 15 MINUTES
COOK 10 MINUTES
200g (7oz/1 cup) sugar
120ml (4fl oz/½ cup) water
100g (3½oz/½ cup) salted butter, at room temperature, diced
120ml (4fl oz/½ cup) double (heavy) cream, at room temperature
1 tsp sea salt flakes
Put the sugar and water in a wide heavy-based saucepan (not a non-stick pan) and set over a low heat. Tilt the pan so the water covers and dampens the sugar.
Watch the pan carefully as the sugar melts, stirring occasionally, then turn up the heat and boil for about 10 minutes, or until it starts to brown before turning a golden amber in colour. As soon as this happens, remove the pan from the heat. Do this immediately or the caramel will catch and burn. You want it to be as dark as possible without it burning.
Add the butter and whisk in (this is best done with an electric hand-held whisk if you have one) until it melts into the caramel. If it separates, just keep