Daring Baker's Challenge Nov 2008: Candy Lab

A couple of months ago I ran across a blog of someone who had done a Daring Baker's Challenge. I was attracted to the community of alternative bakers. The idea is that everyone involved cooks the same recipe and posts it on their blogs once a month on the same day. The rules are that you follow the recipe and instructions as directed unless you have a health concern that prevents you from doing so.

I don't have any health conditions, but I would like to eat more healthy. In particular I'd like to avoid sugar because of the diabeties in my family. For my first month, I have just followed the recipe as directed. I would like to try an alternative verison that uses stevia, agave and/or brown rice syrup, but I didn't get around to that yet.

This months recipes are: Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting courtesy of Shuna Fish Lydon, as published on Bay Area Bites . And Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich. The host this month is Shuna of Eggbeater. Cohosting are Alex of Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo, Jen of Foray into Food, and Natalie of Gluten-a-Go-Go.

This month is very much dedicated to sugar. It's caramel cake, with caramel frosting and optional caramels. I love candy making (caramel popcorn and toffee), but I hadn't tried caramel yet.

The syrup is required for both the cake and the frosting, so I started there. It was hard to get know when to take it off the heat. The first time I under cooked it and it turned out to be a thick mass of solid uncarameled sugar. The second time, I cooked it a bit longer and think I got it about right. Here they are side-by-side, with the correct one on the left. The one that is under cooked looks like a tub of butter, but it's really hard.

I opted to make cupcakes instead of cake, because I thought it would make them easier to share. I also made some as mini-cupcakes. I didn't have wrappers for those and most of them broke coming out of the pan. Drats! I had to eat those. The cake recipe was pretty straight forward. The frosting was pretty easy as well. I did have to warm up my caramel syrup a bit to make it easier to spoon out.

I was wondering if I could make something out of the sugar mass from the caramel syrup gone wrong. So I reheated it adding a litte cream and cooking it to the fudge stage. At the time, I wasn't thinking that would turn out to be like pralines, but I realized it was as soon as I poured it. I should have therefore made little patties instead of the big mass of candy I created. Here's how it turned out:

Because I thought it would be pretty, I drizzled some of the praline like candy and the caramel sauce over the frosted cupcakes. I was a little overwhelming for the flavor because the cupcakes with frosting were plenty sweet enough all ready.

I loved the idea of making the optional caramels. I made them with cardamom as recommended and then made a batch with lavendar. Both turned out a pull-your-fillings-out consistency, kind of like Sugar Daddies. I think I might should have reduced the cooking temperature because I'm at high altitute. I loved the flavor though of both the cardamom and lavendar. I rolled them in powdered sugar to prevent them from sticking to each other. I forgot to take a picture of that. I would consider wax paper instead of foil in the future, because I ended up with bits of foil stuck to the candy.

Candy Lab: Once the caramels were hard and I realized they weren't a good texture. I tried reheating them in a couple of different ways, adding milk, butter, and soy milk. I did find that they were salvagable. I would cook them with the liquid/fat until bubbling again. I ended up with all range of textures from thick sauce, to burnt hard candy. It was fun to play around.

Here's some picks of the candy in the pan and with a bit of foil stuck: