Cara Mia! My Beloved, My Caramel!

Making caramels is truly a labor of patience and love.  One has to pay close attention to the sugar and be at one with it, knowing just the right moment to add the cream to get the perfect soft and chewy consistency so that it is not too hard, but tough enough to resist slightly and yield with the heat of your mouth.  Sugar is temperamental and can really give you a hard time if you don't coddle it and keep it from crystallizing around the edges of the pot.  I find that using high quality ingredients helps produce a much finer and more elegant product.

When making my Double Grey caramels, I steep the organic, loose earl grey tea in the cream for a good while, straining it carefully before adding it to the bubbling sugar syrup.  I finish the caramels with a sprinkling of grey salt, which adds just the right  balance of salty to sweet and actually plays very nicely with the bergamot in the tea.  The bit of crunch that the salt lends to the creaminess of the caramel is so playful in the mouth and it bursts and makes you salivate and that is one happy experience.


My Sassy Rose caramels blend the exotic flavors of pure Bourbon Madagascar vanilla and rose water.  When I was creating and testing this recipe I thought it would be fun to sprinkle the top with Himalayan pink salt.  I thought it would be dainty to pair a pink salt with the rose flavor.  What really sealed the deal for me was not only the delightful tone that it set, but I had read about its healing benefits.  Think about it.  What does a women want most when she is suffering from PMS?  Something sweet, something salty, something comforting, something exotic, and something that will make her feel a whole lot better.  Well, check out these stats!  Himalayan salt helps control the water levels within the body.  Bloat much?  Not a problem!  It aids in the reduction of the common signs of aging.  Goodbye botox, hello caramels!  It reduces muscle cramps.  Hellooooo...need I say more?  Ummm, maybe not, but I will.  It increases bone strength.  And it prevents cellulite.  What?  Did you hear that?  Eating caramels with Himalayan pink salt can help prevent cellulite?  Well...maybe the caramels won't do that, but the salt is supposed to, and that makes these caramels a bit better than those plastic wrapped little squares they sell in the supermarkets.  Himalayan pink salt is just the perfect match for this comforting caramel.

These are just a couple of the many flavored caramels that I've created, and they are my favorites, by far.

The next time you are looking for that perfect sweet, make it a high-quality caramel.  You don't need a lot of them to get some gratification.  One superb caramel lasts a while if you let it melt in your mouth, and if you just can't bear the wait and have to chew, that really gives your mouth a workout and the sticky bits that stay on your teeth will be savored for a little while longer.  (Just make sure to brush well afterwards. LOL)