Rich, Chewy Chocolate Caramels Recipe

today I'm going to show you how to make these rich chewy chocolate caramels entirely from scratch in your own home kitchen without using any fancy ingredients or equipment if you've ever tried making caramels before and were disappointed because they turned out too hard or too soft you're going to love this video because I'm going to show you a foolproof way to get a perfect texture your caramels are always going to turn out so rich chewy and chocy every time imagine giving these caramels as a birthday present or a thank you or any occasion and I can tell you you won't find caramels like this in a store today the original recipe starts with two cups of heavy cream here I have a 473 ml carton of cream that's just shy of two cups but I always use this amount and it always turns out I'm going to take this to the stove and heat it to lukewarm and just set it aside and meanwhile in a large pot make sure you use something with a good insulated bottom I'm going to start with 2 cups of sugar here I have one cup of corn syrup golden corn syrup and remember if you oil that measuring cup first that corn syrup will slide out beautifully here I have 4 ounces of unsweetened chocolate you can use Bittersweet or semi your caramels will just be a little sweeter and 1 teaspoon of salt I'm going to bring this to a boil over medium to medium high heat and it's really important that you stir it constantly here you want that chocolate to fully melt and for the sugar to be completely dissolved OLS olved if you don't stir it constantly here that Sugar might remain granular and you'll have crunchier caramels which is what you don't want this is a pretty standard practice for most candy making I know a lot of caramel recipes say to don't stir right now but this is not one of those recipes so just keep stirring and finally when you do start seeing it come to a boil you don't have to stir so much anymore now you'll want to reduce the heat to a medium or a medium low and let it cook like this for 5 to 6 minutes technically we're looking for 250° F or firm ball stage on a candy thermometer but accuracy is not important right now just boil it for 5 to 6 minutes oh and don't panic cuz I am going to show you how to do this without the candy thermometer now here I have my warmed cream this is just a little warmer than lukewarm and now I'm going to slowly start adding this about a third at a time the aim here is to add it gradually enough so that the mixture never really stops boiling the reason you want to do this is because it will maintain the temperature and save you time and it will also cook a lot more evenly and by the way if you're looking for a written version of this recipe I have it on my blog and I've linked it in the description below and right now might also be a good time to say if you're enjoying this video and you're learning something let me know by hitting that like button and if you really want to make my day don't forget to hit the Subscribe button along with the notification bell all right right looks like all the cream's been added you may lose the boiling point for a few seconds but it should come back immediately and this time we have to be a lot more accurate about how long we cook it and it's going to take a lot longer at least 35 minutes you can stir it every now and then just to make sure it's not burning on the bottom but for the most part you want to just leave it alone so in the meantime while that cooks let's get our pan ready here I have an 8 in square metal pan and you're going to want to put something like a rack or a board underneath it to protect the table now I'm going to add a little tiny glug of some kind of neutral oil I'm using vegetable oil here that was about 2 teaspoons and you want to brush it all over getting every little Edge and corner and that's all you need to do to prep your pan now this has been boiling for 35 minutes and we're at 237° fit that's softball stage if you don't have a candy thermometer just drop a little bit of the mixture into some very cold water and you're going to notice it'll form a ball on the bottom and you can see here that this is literally a soft ball perfect if we were making fudge but not caramels so we have to cook it for about 10 more minutes keep checking with the thermometer or with the cold water test and after 10 more minutes of cooking we're already at firm ball stage 248° is perfect but this is how the ball looks it's kind of firm and even has a Chey exterior now it's it's time to add half a cup of butter and I've cut this into little cubes and just like the cream you want to add the pieces of butter gradually so that the mixture never stops boiling the butter was neither cold nor warm it's just room temperature you want it to stay firm enough so you can cut it into pieces and once you've added all the butter in you have to cook it to firm ball stage one last time and that took a total of 8 minutes here just check every few minutes using your thermometer if you have one or do the cold water test and as you can see here it looks like it came back to firm ball stage so now you can shut off the heat and now add 1 and 1/4 tpoon of vanilla it's safe to say now that your chocolate caramels are basically done stir that vanilla in really well it takes a lot of stirring to make things incorporate into this mixture but it'll happen eventually now you can take this mixture and pour it into your prepared pan and now we have to let it set up for a few hours and that depends greatly on the temperature of your house so I'm just going to let this sit and this is what it's going to look like much later after it sets up so you'll want to take a knife and run it along the sides to loosen it and your caramel should come out perfectly there's enough cream and butter in this mixture that it doesn't really stick to anything terribly and we oiled the pan so it should be good and now you can cut it into however many squares you want I always go for 64 and I think you can see here just by the way the slab of caramel is cutting that we've cooked it to the perfect temperature these chocolate caramels turned out chewy rich and perfect they're not too hard they're not too soft and biting into one of these is just pure chocy caramel Bliss see for yourself you'd be really hard pressed to find a caramel this good in any candy shop or let alone a grocery store and I'd say the main reason why your caramels may have not turned out in in the past is because they just weren't cooked to the proper temperature now you're going to want to take each caramel and individually wrap them I just cut some squares of wax paper for this but I know you can order candy wrappers online another thing I like to do with these sometimes is cover them with chocolate or even turn them into Turtles I have a video on this channel and I'll link it in the description so there you have it guys I hope when you try this recipe they turned out as well for you as they did for me I've given you all the secrets now go make these and enjoy or you might want to check out these vanilla caramels