Watering for cakes, cake decorating, topping for ice cream, sauce for desserts - for which reason, liquid caramel is not needed on the farm! The recipe for a viscous sweet mass was invented a long time ago, more than two thousand years ago, in India. Sugarcane was crushed into porridge and, pouring water, boiled caramel. Since that time, mankind has been enriched with dozens of names of sweets, which contain caramel. These are milk sweets with filling, butterscotch, and candy. And of course, everyone since childhood is a beloved cockerel on a stick. They learned to make this sweetness in a cunning way before the revolution. There is no need for special wisdom here: you cook thick syrup, pour into a greased form, cool ... But how to make caramel liquid? There are secrets to this art. And we will reveal them to you in this article.
Some chemistry
First, let's understand what caramel is. This is a French word. It means everything made from sugarcane. In chemical terms, caramel is glucose, sucrose and maltose. In factory production it is prepared like this. Heated sugar with starch syrup in a ratio of two to one. Inert syrup is sometimes used. The final product in this case contains less glucose (it is partially replaced by fructose) and is more hydroscopic. As soon as the caramel is cooked, it is very plastic. You can create any shapes from it. But as soon as it cools, it becomes solid. How to make liquid caramel? To do this, stop the crystallization of sugar. And any acid will cope with this task. Naturally, non-sulfuric and similar chemicals are used in cooking. The choice of acids that are not harmful to the human stomach is small: lemon juice, vinegar, dry wine.
Liquid caramel for cake
Culinary experts often think: how to decorate your multi-layered masterpiece in an original way? Caramel comes to their rescue. You can give it any color with the help of food colors (but it will be healthier to leave a beautiful amber hue of melted sugar). Warm caramel is as elastic as clay. Under the skillful hands of the sculptor, she turns into the most intricate figures with which to decorate the cake. Another interesting way is to apply intricate thread patterns using a protein or butter cream while the caramel is liquid. The recipe for such a lattice is elementary. Cook thick syrup. We check the readiness by a drop: dipped in a glass of cold water, it does not dissolve, but remains a soft elastic ball. Lubricate the surface (preferably glass) with oil. We scoop the hot caramel with a spoon and apply it to the surface in the form of a lattice, inscriptions and the like.
Cook liquid caramel
We have already hinted at how sugar crystallization can be avoided. But we will return to lemon juice or wine. In the meantime, put a ladle on the fire. It should have a thick bottom - this is an indispensable condition. A handle by the dishes is needed for our safety - caramel is very hot and tends to splatter violently. As soon as the bucket is sufficiently heated, pour sugar and pour water. The proportion of these two ingredients is quite simple. For every hundred grams of sweet sand, you need a spoonful of water to make liquid caramel. The recipe recommends taking brown sugar, but given its considerable price, you can get by with white. Do not mix - a spoon, especially a metal one, is contraindicated in the process of caramelization. Just leave the sugar to melt over medium heat. After a couple of minutes, the sugar will begin to melt. A liquid forms around the edges. Then we carefully move the bucket in a circular motion so that the syrup captures more unmelted granulated sugar. When the whole mass becomes liquid, its color changes to dark amber and the aroma of caramel appears, pour in the acid. Two hundred grams of sugar is enough juice of half a lemon.
Liquid caramel for future use
The mass prepared according to the above recipe is still too thick with full cooling. And how do you want to have at home topping for ice cream, puddings, pancakes. And for this we need liquid caramel. The recipe for maintaining it in a state of viscous mass is given here. It resembles a method for making hard candy. But if you want the mass to remain liquid, you need to make sure that the sugar is not too digested. Acquisition of a mass of brownish color should not be allowed. From time to time, the silicone brush should be lowered into hot water and brushed off all formed crystals from the wall of the bucket. If you notice that the mass still began to thicken too much, add a couple of spoons of water to it and warm it again. If sugar melts, turns brown, then there is a way to save caramel. Add a couple of spoons of hot water to the mass. This must be done very carefully - there will be a lot of spray.
Microwave cooking
There is also such a method, using which it turns out delicious homemade caramel. The recipe requires stocking up with heat-resistant glass or ceramic dishes with high walls. Pour five tablespoons of water into it and put in the oven for one minute at maximum power. Add two hundred grams of sugar, mix with a wooden spoon. We put the dishes back into the oven to maximum. After about a minute, the sugar begins to turn into syrup. We constantly keep the process of cooking caramel under constant control. We regularly take out the dishes and knead with a wooden spoon. We are taking a moment to make the caramel turn golden. We take out and add seven tablespoons of hot water. You need to do this with rubber gloves and “four hands”. One person pours water, and the second quickly kneads the mixture with a wooden spoon, trying to form a lot of air bubbles.
Toffee Sauce
This creamy liquid caramel at home is cooked exactly the same in the microwave. The whole cooking process is completely identical to the above. The only difference is that instead of seven tablespoons of hot water, we add the same amount of boiling cream with a ten percent fat content. Store toffee sauce in the refrigerator, as dairy products can turn sour in a very sweet environment.
Orange homemade caramel: a recipe from Spain
On the Iberian Peninsula, citrus sauce is served with desserts as well as meat and poultry dishes. This caramel is made using the jam method. Pour four hundred milliliters of freshly squeezed orange juice into a saucepan. We fall asleep with two hundred grams of granulated sugar. Boil until the consistency of liquid caramel. Add grated orange zest. You can also flavor caramel with vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom for taste. If the resulting product hardens too much when solidified, it becomes hard, like a citrus lollipop, we again heat it and add a bit of water. Such an orange sauce should be stored in a cool place. The Spaniards pour water on their flans - desserts like pudding. This sauce is suitable for duck.
Flavoring additives
Are you not satisfied with the sweetness of regular baked sugar? Then you can give the dish different flavors. Boiled syrup gets along well with chocolate, nuts, honey, cream, spices. Do not forget that modern pharmaceuticals have also adopted caramel and produces numerous lozenges for cough and sore throat. Just add medicinal herbs to the syrup - mint, eucalyptus, etc. Chocolate caramel is a leader in popularity among children. It can be made as hard as candy. Or as soft as praline candy. By the way, in the same way you can make coffee sweets. With the help of cocoa or chocolate, you can create a delicious topping for ice cream, puddings, profiteroles. It is also good to decorate cakes and eclairs with such caramel.
Homemade candy
Than to spend money on dubious quality of a purchased product, let's make delicious creamy caramels ourselves. They will come out like everyone's favorite "Cow." In a bowl with a thick bottom, slowly heat one glass of granulated sugar. You can stir with a wooden stick until all the crystals have melted. Add half a liter of skim milk or cream. Cook for about ten minutes, stirring with the same wand. At this stage, you can add some flavoring additives - for example, two soup spoons of honey, a little cocoa, nuts, vanilla. But all this is optional. And what you need to add to the sweets is a hundred grams of butter. We put the saucepan on low heat and cook, stirring continuously, until the mass thickens. We cover the baking sheet with foil or baking paper. Grease with fat. Pour the mass and let it cool slightly. Soft caramel is perfectly cut. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the moment when it will no longer be liquid, but will not yet harden.