Busy Busy!

Holidays are in full swing with lots going on.  We have had 2 Christmas parties already and even cut down our tree last friday!  Due to the hustle and bustle of the season I have gotten a bit off track with blogging.  I have a bit of things to catch up on.

I finally cooked up our teeny tiny egg!  The size of the yolk clearly effects the size of the egg; there was plenty white but the yolk was super tiny and misshapen.   I simply fried it up and could not believe the taste of this little egg!  It was like the flavour of a large egg was packed into this little bundle of deliciousness.  The texture of the egg was a bit different but in a good way.  It was more dense than a regular size egg... it was really quite fantastic!

... and so I enjoyed my little bundle of goodness!

For a family Christmas party we decided to make some salted caramels!   We adapted the recipe from makinglifedelicious.com.  The recipe we used is:

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter plus more for greasing
• 1 heaping teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup water

1.  Line bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly butter the parchment.

2.  Bring cream, butter, sea salt and vanilla to a boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.  

3.  Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan, stirring just until sugar is dissolved. 

4.  Then boil, without stirring, until mixture just starts to turn color.  Lightly swirl the pan to even out the color as it darkens.  (We allowed ours to boil a bit to fast and the sugar mixture just slightly overcooked.)

5.  When the color is a shade darker than what you want for your caramel you add the cream and butter mixture... be careful as it will bubble up.  

6.  Continue to simmer, stirring often and keep your candy thermometer submerged.  Once you reach your ideal temperature, somewhere between firm and hard ball, (we did 255 degrees) you immediately remove the pot from the heat and pour it into the lined baking pan.

7.  Allow to cool for a few hours until the caramels have set.  Cut into desired size and wrap them in waxed paper with twisted edges.

The caramels turned out great.  The sugar was slightly overcooked but definitely not enough to ruin the caramels.   The colour was nice, it was just reached a bit too fast; you want the sugar mixture to boil but not on high.