May we have a show of hands: Who thinks chocolate is the best flavor in the dessert world? Now, who thinks caramel is the best? Not as many hands in the air, but mine is one of them. While chocolate is perfectly nice – and we’ll be seeing plenty of it during this sentimental season – caramel is the truly sensual treat.
Tawny-gold and glossy (why is “The Girl From Ipanema” suddenly playing in my head?), a good caramel sauce starts sweet and finishes just short of bitter. For me, bitterness is the key. That edge prevents caramel from being cloyingly sweet, which is a common hazard, as it’s pretty much pure sugar, and it seduces you into taking just one more taste.
Beyond the luscious factor, another brilliant aspect of caramel is its simplicity. Anyone can make it anywhere, because for the most basic sauce, all you need is sugar, heat and a final liquid. And while I do add salt and vanilla extract . . . and, okay, few chunks of butter, caramel’s complexity comes from chemistry.
Let’s look at the basic process: Boiling, melting, burning (almost), enriching.
– Boiling involves evaporating all the water in the sugar to yield pure sucrose that can get hot enough to melt. Paradoxically though, when I make caramel, I begin by adding water to the sugar. This method, called a “wet” caramel, takes a few minutes longer but ensures a more even caramelization. For the “dry” caramel method, you simply heat the sugar in an empty pan until melted and caramelized. It’s quick and direct, but the risk is that some parts of the sugar melt faster than others, and can burn before the rest had made it even to light amber. The way to make the dry method work is to swirl the melting sugar gently and strategically for a uniform result.