As promised, here are further musings on caramel, milk caramel in particular.   There is something so appealing about the golden look, the warm, toasty smell; so many foods are enhanced by careful, gentle burning.  Some are even burned more violently, like the glossy bronzed sugar layer on top of crème brûlée, or the grill marks on a fine steak.  Don’t forget Paul Prudhomme’s blackened redfish, which took ‘80s America by storm (and nearly wiped out redfish, too).  But I digress.
           Some rich custardy sweets depend upon burned sugar, particularly the crème brûlée already mentioned and crème (renversée au) caramel – flan.  You might also pour a layer of caramel into the bottom of your mold for panna cotta.  As the mixture chills and sets, even without baking, the hygroscopic (hydrophilic) properties of sugar creations in general and caramel in particular will pull moisture from the milk mixture just as with flan and create a translucent golden syrup.  By the way, I make an extraordinary flan with a bit of cream cheese in it, a concept from the Yucatán called Flan Napolitano.  Please let me know if you are interested and I will be happy to post the recipe.
           Add cream to burned sugar, stir over heat until the caramel dissolves into the cream, and you have a caramel sauce.  Brown sugar gives flavor to many milky creations – even butterscotch pudding – and the molasses and caramel color that turn white sugar into brown sugar are the flavoring agents.
           Not so long before Kraft rolled out its 1933 creation and added a new word to the American vocabulary – carmel – Louis-Camille Maillard published (in 1912) a paper with some information about protein that the rest of the world might not have thought too much about.  Everyone knew that when you throw a steak on a hot grill or turn a chicken on a spit over a healthy fire, they brown.  And cooks knew that when you burn sugar over high heat it passes first through a series of ever-darker brown states that are delicious until the later stages become bitter tasting. 
           Maillard noticed that while sugar caramelizes at 338°F (170°C), and that the steak and the chicken are at high heat too, it is possible to boil milk and sugar together and get browning too, even if the temperature never passes 240°F, the soft ball!  Dried and processed milk products also tend to brown when they are stored in a warm place, a serious consideration for infant formulas because of the nutritional changes that accompany the flavor and color change.  So what is happening here?  It is a complex reaction now called the Maillard Effect or Maillard browning, whereby a combination of protein and sugar in the right proportions and with comparatively little heat will go through the chemical and nutritional changes that produce, among other reactions, that wonderful toasty aroma and flavor. 
           Is it caramel?  No, not really.  Do we care?  Dulce de leche (cajeta, manjar blanco, arquipe) is still darkly delicious however it got that way.  I will just mention here that the Maillard Effect occurs more readily in alkaline mixtures, which seems to be why dulce de leche recipes generally include sodium bicarbonate.  I had always thought that the added alkalinity would protect the milk from curdling as the pH shifts toward acidic with caramelization.  Now I know that there is no true caramelization happening here, but Maillard browning has very much the same results.          
           Working with a slightly different formula and no bicarb this time, you can create your own soft “caramel”.  Whatever it really is, it will be buttery and wonderful, and far more tempting than anything Kraft makes!  I answered the caramel call this spring for my chocolate, pecan, caramel bunnies in the Easter line at bruce’s best.  The caramel – and the bunnies – turned out even better than I had hoped, and I will be looking for other excuses to use this treat in future.  There are three basic approaches – fresh cream, evaporated milk, and condensed milk.  I find the condensed milk version very easy and irresistible.  This basic formula originally came from a professional recipe book, and I have misplaced the attribution.  I will post it later if I can dig it up.   

Soft Caramel

             1 cup water
             18 ounces – about 2 1/3 cups – sugar
             One 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
             1 ¼ cups – 10 fluid ounces, 15 ounces by weight – light corn syrup
             7 ounces butter
             ½ teaspoon salt
             2 teaspoons vanilla extract            Combine in a wide, heavy-bottomed saucepan the water, sugar, condensed milk, and corn syrup.  Stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved, then bring the mixture to 230

°F, stirring often.  Stir in the butter and stir constantly until the mixture reaches 240°.  This temperature will yield a nice, gooey caramel after it cools.  You may also continue to 243°F for a slightly firmer result that might hold its shape better.  Stir in the salt and vanilla.
             Scrape the mixture onto a buttered pan to cool.  While it is still warm you may pipe it with a pastry bag or squeeze bottle.  When it has cooled to room temperature it will cut with a knife or wire.  Wrap airtight and refrigerate, but return it to room temperature to work with it, and for eating, too.
                                         
                                                            

TagsAdd new tag, arquipe, caramel, chocolate, creme brulee, creme caramel, dulce de leche, flan, Maillard effect, manjar blanco, panna cotta, pecan