Salted Caramels.

Happy New Year!

I've been away for the past few weeks, so this is my first post since Christmas! I'm glad to be back.
How was your New Year's eve? Brent and I went to the Falls Festival in Marion Bay with some of our friends, and it looked a bit like this:

And then Brent and I went on a trip to his shack up north for a week and it looked a bit like this:


So, I've had a very relaxed holiday and it's about time I finish posting my Christmas recipes (how slack that I didn't do it before).

(And in these really hard times we are facing, I think it's good to be able to be thankful for the holidays you can take. I wouldn't be surprised if the people of Queensland wish they were on holiday somewhere else at the moment.)

I made these salted caramels to give as gifts to my large family for Christmas, and they were pretty tasty. I had a bit of trouble with them though. The first recipe I used didn't work so well, and I ended up with a too salty mess of sweet, softly sticky caramels, which isn't really what I wanted. I don't think the instructions on the recipe were very instructive, if you know what I mean. I wanted chewy, not too hard-not  too soft caramels, that would travel well, and this recipe from Everybody Likes Sandwiches was perfect.
After one disaster, I finally got it right.

So I think you should face your candy fears and try this recipe. It's not that hard, promise! And it's totally rewarding. You'll definitely feel like Susie Housewife after making these.

Salted Caramels.
From Everybody Likes Sandwiches.

1 cup thin cream
5 tbs butter, diced
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/4 cup glucose syrup
1/4 cup water

Lightly grease some baking paper and line a square 23×23cm dish.
In a small saucepan, bring cream, butter, and salt to a boil. Set aside.
In a large saucepan, boil water, glucose and sugar, whisking until sugar is dissolved. Boil mixture (don’t stir!) until a deep caramel colour is reached, about 150C (300F). It the caramel isn't quite dark enough, you can cook it higher than this temperature.
Very slowly pour in cream mix (it will bubble up), stirring frequently over a rapid boil until caramel reaches around 120C (250F) on thermometer, about 10 minutes.
Pour into baking dish and cool for at least 2 hours. Cut into pieces and wrap in waxed paper.

Toffee apple cake.

I went to my Dad's house today, because my sister was sick and wanted me to hang out with her. She likes to watch the O.C, and I like to bake things. So we did both. This cake was super easy to make. Caitlin made the batter, and I peeled the apples. The end.

But wait! There's more! This cake is more than just a regular apple cake. Soft morsels of cinnamon-y apple hiding amongst a moist cinnamon-y cake, topped with a crunchy, hard coating of sweet, buttery caramel. Goodness me was this combination delicious. We ate half the cake in one go!

This cake is a Smitten Kitchen recipe, and I trust what she says in all her recipes, but I couldn't stop thinking about caramel after I saw David Lebovitz's post on how to make dry caramel. So we added that as well. I hadn't made dry caramel before, but it's really easy. I think I prefer it to regular caramel made with water.

I don't have anything more to say about the cake, so here's a heap of photos. If a picture is worth a thousand words, here's six thousand words for you to look at. Hopefully they convey this delicious experience.

Toffee Apple Cake:
Slightly adapted from Smitten Kitchen

As I said above, my sister made the batter, so I'm not sure how much she deviated from the recipe (if she did at all. She follows the rules), so I'll give you the original batter recipe. But we did mix it up a bit with the caramel topping (which wasn't in the original recipe) and by changing around the order of the batter/apple layers. Also, the recipe said to bake the cake for 1 1/2 hours, but after an hour, our cake was done, so I've changed the baking time in the recipe. Like I said, only slightly adapted.

6 apples, we used golden delicious, peeled, cored and diced
1 tbsp cinnamon
5 tbsp sugar

2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup orange juice
2 1/2 tsps vanilla
4 eggs
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a bundt tin.
Toss the apples with the cinnamon and sugar, set aside.
In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt.
In a separate bowl, mix oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla.
Mix wet ingredients into the flour mix.
Add eggs, one at a time.
Arrange half the apples on the bottom of the tin.
Pour half the batter onto the apples. Arrange the remaining apples and then pour the rest of the batter on top.
Bake for about 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean.
Turn the cake out onto a large plate and pour over the caramel topping.

For the Caramel Topping:
With help from David Lebovitz

Pour 1 cup caster sugar into a heavy based pan. Place over medium heat. Don't stir it, but just watch it until it starts to liquify around the edges. When this happens, start to drag the liquid bits into the middle of the pan, but try not to stir it too much, otherwise it can crystallise.
The sugar will start to caramelise at this point, so keep watching it until all the sugar is dissolved and the caramel is bronze coloured. Try not to burn it, as burnt caramel cannot be fixed. If you're using a black pan, lift some of the caramel out of the pan to check what colour it is. Once all the sugar has liquified, and is bronzey coloured, it's ready!
If you prefer a buttery caramel (I sure do), add a tablespoon of butter and stir it in. It will bubble up as the butter melts, but keep stirring it in until incorporated.
It hardens fairly quickly, so only make the caramel when you're ready to pour it over the cake.