Apple Cider Caramels

My no pumpkin pledge has already been severely tested.  In the past couple of days, my aunt has sent me not one, but two mouth-watering pumpkin recipes. Ack!

Holding firm to my promise, however, I threw caution to the wind again and cooked some sugar. This is quite a lucky streak for me – not one burn or cut.

I did, however, run into a door at work, so I guess it all evens out.

Anyway. . . this time I tried apple cider caramels (with not one drop of pumpkin).

Basically, you boil 2 cups of apple cider down to 1/3 cup.  My house smelled wonderful during this process.

cooking sugar

Then you boil sugar, water, and a bit of cream to a scary-high temperature.  Off the heat, you add more cream, the cider, lots of wonderful spices, and butter and bring the mixture back up to the soft ball stage.  It’s that easy. 

stirring in cream, cider, and butter

cooking caramel

The recipe makes a soft, not-sticky-enough-to-destroy-dental-work caramel. Blondie's Cake and Things has wonderful directions, so I’ll send you right to her blog.  I followed her recipe exactly.

 And, after spending a couple hours cutting parchment paper and slicing and wrapping caramels, I’m definitely going to remember her story about seeing caramels packaged in long logs. No more wrapping tiny pieces of candy for me!