Caramel liquid: a recipe for cooking at home

Watering to cakes, decorating a cake, ice cream topping, sauce for desserts - for which just do not need caramel liquid on the farm! The recipe for a sticky sweet mass was invented a long time ago, more than two thousand years ago, in India. Sugar cane was ground into porridge and, filling the water, caramel was boiled. Since that time mankind has enriched with dozens of names of sweets, which contain caramel. This is a milk candy with a filling, and toffee, and lollipops. And of course, all from childhood a beloved cockerel on a stick. This sweetness was learned to be made by handicraft before the revolution. You do not need special wisdom here: you make a thick syrup, pour it into a greased form, cool it ... But how to make caramel remain liquid? In this art there are secrets. And we will reveal them to you in this article.

A little chemistry

First, we'll figure out what caramel is. This is the French word. It means everything that is made from sugar cane. In the chemical exposition, caramel is glucose, sucrose and maltose. In the factory production it is prepared as follows. Heat sugar with starch syrup at a ratio of two to one. Sometimes use an inert syrup. The final product in this case contains less glucose (it partially replaces fructose) and is more hydroscopic. Once the caramel is cooked, it is very plastic. From it you can create any shape. But as soon as it cools, it becomes firm. How to make liquid caramel? To do this, stop the process of crystallization of sugar. And with this task will cope with any acid. In cooking, naturally, not sulfuric and similar chemicals are used. The choice is not harmful to the human stomach acid is small: lemon juice, vinegar, dry wine.

Liquid caramel for a cake

Often culinary experts think: how to decorate your multi-layered masterpiece in an original way? Caramel comes to their rescue. It can be given any color with the help of food colors (but it will be healthier to leave a beautiful amber shade of melted sugar). Warm caramel is elastic, like plasticine. Under the skilful hands of the sculptor, she turns into the most intricate figures, with which you can decorate the cake. Another interesting way - for protein or cream cream to apply intricate thread patterns, while caramel is liquid. The recipe for such a lattice is elementary. We cook a thick syrup. We check the readiness of drops: dropped into a glass with cold water, it does not dissolve, but remains a soft elastic ball. Lubricate the surface (better 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.

Boil the liquid caramel

We have already hinted at how to avoid the crystallization of sugar. But we will return to lemon juice or wine. Meanwhile, we put a ladle on the fire. It must have a thick bottom - this is an indispensable condition. The handle at the dishes is needed for our safety - the caramel is very hot and tends to be splashed violently. As soon as the scoop is sufficiently heated, pour out the sugar and pour the 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 caramel liquid. The recipe recommends taking brown sugar, but, given its considerable price, you can get by and white. Do not mix - a spoon, especially metallic, in the process of caramel is contraindicated. Just leave the sugar to melt over medium heat. After a couple of minutes, the sugar will begin to melt. A liquid forms along the edges. Then, gently in circular motions, we move the ladle, so that the syrup grabs more unmelted still sugar. When the whole mass becomes liquid, its color changes to dark amber and the aroma of caramel appears, we pour in the acid. Two hundred grams of sugar is enough juice half a lemon.

Liquid caramel for future use

Weight, prepared according to the above recipe, still too thickens when fully cooled. And how you want to have a home topping for ice cream, puddings, pancakes. And for this we need caramel liquid. The recipe for its conservation in the state of viscous mass is given here. It resembles the way of making hard caramel. But if you want the mass to remain liquid, you need to make sure that sugar is not too digested. You can not allow the purchase of a mass of brownish color. The silicone brush should be lowered from time to time into hot water and smoothed from the wall of the ladle with all the crystals formed. If you notice that the mass is still too thick, add a couple of spoons of water and warm it up again. If the sugar is drowned, turned brownish, then there is a way to save caramel. Add a couple of spoonfuls of hot water to the mass. It should be done very carefully - there will be a lot of splashing.

Microwave cooking

There is also such a method, when using which you get a delicious homemade caramel. The recipe prescribes to be stocked with heat-resistant glass or ceramic dishes with high walls. Pour into it five tablespoons of water and put in the oven for one minute at maximum power. Add two hundred grams of sugar, mix it with a wooden spoon. Put the dishes back in the oven to the maximum. After about a minute, sugar will begin to turn into syrup. Constantly keep the process of caramel cooking under constant control. Regularly we take out the dishes and mix them with a wooden spoon. We are improving the moment when caramel turns golden. We take out and top up seven tablespoons of hot water. Do this in rubber gloves and "four hands". One person pours water, and the second quickly mixes the mixture with a wooden spoon, trying to create a lot of air bubbles.

Toffee sauce

This creamy liquid caramel is prepared in the home in exactly the same way, in a microwave. The entire 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 of 10% fat content. Store the toffee sauce in the refrigerator, as dairy products can sour and in a very sweet environment.

Orange homemade caramel: recipe from Spain

In the Iberian Peninsula, citrus sauce is served both for desserts and meat and poultry dishes. This caramel is made according to the method of jam. Pour into a saucepan four hundred milliliters of freshly squeezed orange juice. We fall asleep with two hundred grams of sugar. Boil to the consistency of liquid caramel. Add a grated orange peel. You can also flavor the caramel flavor with vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom. If the resulting product hardens when hardening, it becomes hard, like citrus candy, reheat and pour a little water. Store such orange sauce should be in a cool place. The Spaniards watered their flannels - desserts like pudding. This sauce will suit the duck.

Taste Additives

You are not satisfied with the sweetness of ordinary ghee? Then you can give the dish different tastes. The boiled syrup perfectly coexists with chocolate, nuts, honey, cream, spices. Do not forget that modern pharmaceutics has also adopted caramel and produces numerous candies from cough and sore throat. Just add the medicinal herbs to the syrup - mint, eucalyptus, etc. Chocolate caramel is the leader in popularity among children. You can make it hard as a candy. Or as soft as a praline candy. By the way, in the same way you can cook and coffee candy. With the help of cocoa or chocolate you are able to create a very tasty topping for a filling, puddings, profiteroles. This caramel is also good to decorate cakes and eclairs.

Homemade sweets

How to spend money on the questionable quality of the purchased product, let's make the delicious creamy caramels. They will come out like the beloved Cowork. In a bowl with a thick bottom, slowly one glass of sugar is heated. You can stir with a wooden stick until all the crystals are melted. Add half a liter of fatty milk or cream. Cook for about ten minutes, stirring with the same stick. At this stage, you can add some flavoring additives - for example, two soup spoons of honey, a little cocoa, nuts, vanillin. But that's all - optional. And what you need to add to the candy necessarily, so it's a hundred grams of butter. We put the saucepan on a weak fire and cook, stirring constantly, until the mass thickens. We lay the pan with foil or baking paper. Lubricate with grease. We pour out the mass and let it cool down a little. Soft caramel is perfectly cut. Therefore, you need to seize the moment when it will not be liquid, but it will not harden.