This Hanukkah, give presents from the heart and the kitchen with homemade food gifts. In this series, we’ll present four sweet and savory ideas to spice up your holiday gift giving for everyone on your list.
Homemade candy makes some of the best DIY holiday food gifts. Besides its visual appeal and delicious taste, most candy recipes produce big batches, so you can knock everyone off your list at once. This year I decided to try my hand at salted caramels, which are simultaneously nostalgic and trendy. They’re not difficult to make, but the secret is all in the temperature.
The base of all caramel recipes is essentially the same: butter, sugar, cream, and corn syrup. Of course, the kind of butter (salted vs. unsalted), sugar (white vs. brown), and cream (heavy cream, condensed milk, or even crème fraiche) vary wildly, as do the order in which to cook it all.
After a good deal of experimentation, I can tell you that I have a preferred method (see below), but that cooking the ingredients in a totally different order also yields tasty results. For example, you could cook the sugar, water and corn syrup together first before adding the cream and butter.
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