Friday, December 30, 2011

Pretzels and beer soft caramels

This is the last candy recipe I am sharing with you right now, not sure when I will make more, Christmas is the perfect season for that since you can share them with friends and family. I was quite excited about those ass they are quite unusual, they are not my favorite but they are interesting. It's a crunchy salty pretzels on top of a buttery, soft caramel (I liked the previous caramel recipe better but that one does not stick to your teeth as much... ;) ). Because they are so soft they tend to spread, even once wrapped as you can see on the picture. This recipes yields to a lot (over 100) candy! so be ready to wrap and cut, I suggest you ask for some friends help or this might render you insane, I know it would have done it for me if Matt had not been there to help.

Pretzels and beer soft caramels
Recipe adapted from Brown eyed baker
Ingredients
- 1 12-oz. bottle of beer (I used a Samuel Adams winter lagger)
- 2 c sugar
- 1 c brown sugar
- 1 c butter
- 1 c cream (light cream works fine)
- 1 c light corn syrup
- 15 pretzel rods
- 5x5 inch squares of wax paper, for wrapping

Directions
 - Bring 1 c of the beer to a simmer in a small sauce pan. Cooked until reduced and syrupy, about 20 minutes. This will yield about 1 tsp of concentrated beer flavoring. Set aside. (I had more but it worked fine too, if you reduce it more you might get more of a beer flavor than I did)


 
 - Butter a 9×13-inch pan, line with parchment paper and butter the paper lightly
- Combine the remaining beer, sugars, butter, cream and corn syrup in a heavy bottomed large pot. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until a candy thermometer reaches 244 degrees F (firm ball stage). Watch out it will bubble up very high as it boils
- Stir in the ale reduction and remove from the heat.

- Pour into the prepared pan and top with the pretzel rods.
- Let cool completely, remove the caramel block from the pan and place pretzel-side up on a cutting board, cut and wrap caramels in prepared wax paper squares.

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