Preserved lemon caramels

Thanks to the recent openings of both Little Flower Candy Co. and Boule Atelier, I've been eating a lot of caramels lately.  Both shops carry truly awesome sea salt caramels; Christine Moore at Little Flower also makes both lemon and vanilla caramels.  After I finished off an entire pound of Moore's salt caramels watching the Rose Bowl, I decided to try making some myself. (A serious sugar high, especially when crossed with a little Pete Carroll-inspired happiness, can make you do crazy things.)  While searching the jumbled contents of my refrigerator for the ingredients, I came across a Mason jar of preserved lemons (Paula Wolfert's recipe).  I loved salt and lemon in caramels: So why not both?

For the recipe, I used one that Emily Green included in a caramel story five years ago, a fleur de sel caramel (see the recipe after the jump) from Alain Ducasse. My preserved lemons were pretty salty, so I omitted the fleur de sel from the Ducasse recipe and used unsalted instead of salted butter.  Then I took a quarter-cup of preserved lemons (pith and fruit removed, washed of their soupy brine) and blended it into a thick purée in a food processor.

I added it to the pan with the half-and-half and butter in the first step of the recipe, then followed the directions, finally cutting the caramels into pieces and wrapping them in waxed paper. (That's them, above.) They're soft and chewy, with a little texture from the flecks of lemon; neither too sweet nor too salty, they have a complexity of flavor that's pretty amazing. A register of citrus, a subtle finish of salt. Between the caramel-loving writers in the office and my two children, I only have a few left. (I'll have to make a double batch this afternoon if I'm going to make it through the BSC title game tonight.)

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Caramel with salted butter

Total time: 30 minutes, plus 2 hours cooling

Yield: 36 caramels

Note: From Alain Ducasse at the Essex House Restaurant in New York. Fleur de sel, a sea salt, is sold at specialty markets.

1 cup half-and-half

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter

1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel

1 pound superfine sugar (about 2 3/4 cups)

1/4 cup corn syrup

1. Bring the half-and-half, butter and fleur de sel to boil in a heavy, 3-quart saucepan. Set aside.

2. Stir together the sugar and corn syrup in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a temperature of 293 degrees on a candy thermometer over medium heat. As the sugar begins to melt, swirl the pan often until all the sugar is melted. Remove the pan from the heat and add the half-and-half mixture. Set the pan over medium heat and bring the mixture to 248 degrees, stirring frequently. This will take 10 to 15 minutes. (The mixture will look like a caramel sauce.)

3. Pour into an 8-inch-square nonstick pan and allow to set 2 hours.

4. After the caramel has completely cooled, set the pan over very low heat just enough to loosen the caramel, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Invert the pan onto a nonstick surface. Cut the caramel into 36 pieces and wrap individually. Store in a dry place.

Each caramel: 115 calories, 90 mg. sodium, 16 mg. cholesterol, 6 grams fat, 4 grams saturated fat, 16 grams carbohydrates, 0 grams protein, 0 grams fiber.