Caramels Recipe | So Soft and Chewy!

Hey, I'm John Kanell. And today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making some chewy, delicious caramels. So let's get started. This recipe comes together really quickly, and once your caramel's ready, it has to go straight into the pan. So we're gonna prep that out right now. Lightly butter a nine by 13 inch dish. You're gonna plop some parchment paper in here, and press it down. And I'm gonna lightly butter the parchment paper as well. You just wanna make sure that nothing sticks so this caramel's released easily. They're soft, they're chewy, they're delicious, but they do stick to things. All prepped up, we can set that aside. Now we're gonna grab a nice, heavy pot and get to work. For this recipe, we're using a four to five quart saucepan, and I just wanna say that it's better if it is nonstick. It is better if it is like a heavy, substantial one. The pots that are really thin-sided tend to like get super hot, and they can burn your caramel. Grab one cup of butter, and we're just gonna cube it up really fast. By the way, if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. Into my pot, I'm adding two cups, or 400 grams of granulated sugar. Too much. One cup, or 220 grams of packed light brown sugar. This amps up the caramel flavor in your caramels. Perfect. One cup of corn syrup, and this is an inverted sugar, so it's gonna help your caramel just be like nice and soft. I would point out this is corn syrup we're using, not high fructose corn syrup, which is a different thing. Add that in. So sticky. And finally, one teaspoon of salt. Caramel is so sweet, you need salt to balance it out, and you could add a little bit more if you wanted. I almost forgot, gotta add in the butter. One cup cubed. Before I pop this into heat, you should have everything else prepped out, so I've measured out two cups of heavy cream. You could warm this up if you want, or it could be like this kind of hanging out and coming to room temperature. And we'll also want some vanilla handy as well. This goes in later, though. And just on the side, I have a little pastry brush and some water. You can brush the sides of your pot down if it gets any caramel there, so it doesn't superheat and get dark and burnt. Onto heat we go. You wanna grab a wooden spoon for stirring, and if you have one, this is a great time to use your thermometer. We want this to come to 245, which is the softball stage. Thermometer is gonna be so helpful, but if you don't have one, grab a glass of cold water, and we're gonna use the old-fashioned softball test, which I'll show you when we get there. But you just need to know when the sugar is at the right temperature to stop. Onto medium heat. Before everything's melted, we've gotta stir things together, so use your wooden spoon and stir constantly. We're just gonna be stirring for a while. I might be kicking up some of the sugar onto the side of the pan. It'll crystallize or burn, so use your pastry brush and just knock that down. These caramels are so good. I think everybody loves a nice, chewy caramel. They melt in your mouth, full of flavor, salty-sweet, and they actually make really good presents. So sometimes I set the kids to work and they wrap them up afterwards, and they make nice party favors or just things to pass out. You can add them into your cookie trays as well or your cookie boxes. And I like them extra more because there's no preservatives and I can tailor the right amount of salt. I like things to be salted caramel vibes. But you could use much less or none if you prefer. Starting to melt really nicely. My butter is melted, so are the sugars, and things are starting to bubble, so it is time to add our cream in. Slowly add your two cups of cream and keep stirring. I added my cream in and that definitely brought the temperature down a bit. It's now at 180. You want this to be 245-ish, so that would be the softball stage. What that means is if I take a spoonful of this mixture and add it into the cold water, it'll form like a piece of caramel sap almost. It'll be soft and gummy. If the mixture got too hot, it would reach the hardball stage where it would go and form like a little drop of amber. It would be like a hard little rock. And if it's too cold, like it is right now, and I added it in, it would just disperse and dissolve. You'll normally feel and hear a difference in the caramel once it comes to that stage. It gets a little bit thicker. It's more of a burp than a bubble, and I'll show you what it looks like. But right now, it's just like a hot caramel soup. My mixture's come to a boil, and you have to keep stirring or it would boil over. You could reduce the temperature a bit if it looks like it's getting up there, which mine is. This stove runs so hot. I'm switching to a whisk for just a little bit because it got really hot. As I was saying, this stove runs, this runs much hotter than most other ones, so the cook time is reduced, and things can get a little bubbly really fast. This pot was a little bit small, so I'm using a bigger one. We're gonna transfer this over and back onto medium heat. If this happens to you, you feel free to do the same. I've made these caramels before in this pot specifically, but today, it was not complying. I wanna mention right now, the temperature climbs up really fast into the 220s, but then once it gets there, it kind of levels out. What's happening is the water that was in the butter, because butter does have some water in it, and the water that was in the cream is basically boiling off, and you're getting more of like a sugar, like a pure sugar fat solution, and that is gonna slowly increase into the softball stage, where we get to 240. So I was at 221 a few minutes ago, and now I'm at 223.7. I'm just telling you this because things get hot really fast, but then the temperature will start climbing much more slowly. You still need to keep stirring. You still wanna keep an eye on it, and right now, you can see it's really like frothy and vibrant on the inside. Once it starts thickening up, you'll notice a difference in color and consistency. You'll even be able to feel it from how much resistance there is to your spoon. Make sure, by the way, you're not using a metal spoon because that conducts heat and will burn you, and you wanna have a nice tall one so your hand is at a safe distance away from the scalding hot sugar. If you've been watching this carefully while you're cooking away, this has gotten a little bit darker. You see more of like burps, like little eyeballs opening up in the pot as opposed to like a frothy, light mixture, and it just looks and feels thicker. I'm at 243 right now, so I'm getting really close. 244, 245. Okay, I'm gonna take it off heat. I wanna show you the water test now, so let's grab a spoon, and let's take a drop and plop it in here. It doesn't even wanna release, but... So in the water, it's formed like a soft ball. I'm adding two teaspoons of vanilla right now. Give that a mix. The alcohol burns off right away, but it smells so good. You could also use bourbon, rum, any kind of extract that you really enjoy would work right here. Okay, it's time to pour this into our pan, so grab some gloves. You do not wanna get burnt. Let's get to work. Got every last drop out, and I didn't make a mess. This is still molten hot. Do not touch it. It needs about four hours at room temperature just to calm down, relax, and solidify. You could speed this up by popping it into the fridge until it is nice and firm. When you're ready to cut this, if it's been in the fridge, pull it out for 30 minutes so it comes to room temperature. And if you would like to have a salted caramel vibe here, grab some flaked sea salt and sprinkle that over after 30 minutes of just chill time. It would just sink in right now, so give this 30 minutes of cooling time, and then we can add the salt if desired. My caramel slab has cooled down, so it's time to remove it from the pan. Unpeel the sides. Now you can give it a cut. The size is up to you. You could have giant pieces, you could have cute little squares, or you could have what I feel are the more traditional bars. So grab a sharp knife, and we're gonna cut that up. Oh, it's so satisfying to cut. Look at that razor-sharp edge you get there. I think this is easiest if you keep it on the parchment, cut a bar, and then on your cutting board, just cut the pieces. The one thing I'll say is that you do not want to stack these or have them touching because they'll kind of melt back into each other. They need to be separated like two best friends in class. See, look, I left these together, and they wanted to meld back into each other. Now, these can be enjoyed immediately, or you can cut some sheets of parchment paper and just wrap them up. Little twist, little twist, and these are good to go. They last for a week at room temperature or several weeks if refrigerated. You can wrap all your caramels now or pop them into a big Tupperware, spaced out with parchment above and below each layer so they don't stick together. But either way, they're gonna be delicious. Fresh caramel butter cream salty sweet amazingness. They're so delicious. I hope you get a chance to make this easy caramel recipe, and if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my candy playlist.