Caramel goodness

This weekend I was recovering from being sick last week. But guess what the best cure is for any illness? Sugar. Mary Poppins already told us: a spoon full of sugar helps the medicin go down. So I decided to make myself some delicious caramel with chopped nuts, covered in chocolate. Cause let’s face it: chocolate simply makes everything in life a little bit better.

My initial idea was to make fudge. I am not the biggest fudge fan, but when I was in England this summer, I found out that you can make fudge in most every flavor! Malibu, lemon-meringue, triple chocolate… Now doesn’t that sound good? So I found some recipes on the internet that sounded good and was ready to give it a whirl. But guess what? Turns out that for making fudge, you need a sugar thermometer. And I don’t have one. Shame on me… So, after spending an hour trying to find a recipe that didn’t require one, I gave up and I just went for a simple caramel recipe.

Now I must admit that making the caramel wasn’t as much of a breeze as I thought it’d be. I’ve done it before, but I couldn’t remember exactly how to do it. Turns out there’s two ways to do it: with or without water. After a few failed attempts, I figured out that I like the water method better(;

Anyways, here’s what you do:
Grab 300 grams of sugar and 100 ml water. Cover a baking sheet or pan with parchment paper.
Put the sugar and water in a pan on a low fire, and stir till the sugar dissolves. After that your turn the fire up, and let it get to a boil. But beware: don’t stir!! This might cause the caramel to crystallize. While it’s boiling, dip a brush in water to dissolve the crystals on the side so they don’t burn. Let it boil until the water has evaporated and it has a nice golden color. Immediately poor it onto your prepared baking sheet/pan, and wait for it to harden out. Be careful, cause it’s very, very, very hot!

Ofcourse you could change it up a little bit like I did. I added 200 grams of assorted nuts, chopped and roasted, and poured the caramel over that. After that I broke the caramel into pieces(with a hammer!) and dipped them in chocolate.

And then… Indulge!