Salted Caramel Chocolates

A few times per year I get elbows deep in chocolate. Leading up to Easter is one of those times. Simple chocolate truffles are my usual go-to, and I always make several batches with various flavors.

This year I decided to use a pretty metal chocolate mould to make salted caramel filled chocolates. Salted caramel is incredibly easy to make, but will impress those you share it with! Beware though, it is also highly addictive and so simple and quick that you shouldn't expect your skinny jeans to fit after you've learned to make it.

Before I start making caramel, I assemble all my ingredients. Once the process starts, it is nice to have everything ready to eliminate stress of rushing to measure ingredients during the critical moments.

I use this recipe from Live Well Bake Often. It works perfectly.

Easy Salted Caramel Sauce

¼ cup water

1 cup granulated sugar

⅔ cup heavy whipping cream

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon size pieces

1 teaspoon vanilla (I've made it without vanilla and it's still amazing)

1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

Add water and sugar to a saucepan that is a bit bigger than you think you'll need. Between steam and bubbling, it is good to have extra space between you and the sauce.

Over medium heat, stir until the sugar dissolves. I used raw sugar with larger grains for this batch, rather than the super refined granulated sugar. It worked just as well!

Once the sugar dissolves, turn the heat up a little and stop stirring. If you stir at this stage crystals might form, and you'll end up with lumpy caramel sauce. It can be hard not to stir - resist the urge!

Let the mixture gently boil until it turns a dark golden color. I always aim for a shade darker than caramel sauce, because the cream and butter will lighten the color. Visualizing the final product helps me get the sugar caramelized the right amount.

Remove from the heat and stir in the cream. BE CAREFUL. Use a measuring cup with a handle. The first time I made this sauce I used one without a handle and got a steam burn (I treated it with a natural herbal burn cream and it was no big deal, but it did hurt initially!).

Stir in butter, vanilla and salt. Taste!

Transfer to a jar and let cool. The caramel sauce will thicken a bit as it cools, so don't worry if it seems a bit runny.

I'm seriously obsessed with making salted caramel sauce. It is amazing on ice cream, apple pie, in these chocolates and right off the spoon.

To make Salted Caramel Filled Chocolates

Next step in the chocolate process was tempering the chocolate. If you're new to chocolate work, tempering is the process of melting and cooling the chocolate at the right speed to keep the butter fat from separating out. If it separates, your chocolate will still taste great, but it will look dried out and funky.

I'm no expert at tempering, but there are lots of great directions online and in chocolate recipe books. They recommend not using chocolate chips, but I did because it is what I was able to buy in bulk from the Mountain People's Co-op in Morgantown.

If you are planning to work with chocolate, I highly recommend reading lots of tempering instructions. I haven't perfected the technique yet, so I won't write instructions.

I will say though, make sure no water gets into your chocolate! Dry your bowl and utensils completely, make sure no steam is near by, dry your hands totally if you wash them during the process. If any water gets into the chocolate it will clump and seize and look awful.

The first few times I used the moulds I had a heck of a time getting the chocolates out, and ended up with mutilated treats and washing a lot of the chocolate down the drain because they simply would not come out. Last year I did some research, and found someone mentioned that metal mould had to be colder than the chocolate. So I put my mould tray in the fridge as I was melting the chocolate.

Once I'd melted and attempted to temper my chocolate, I used a silicone brush (the only silicone utensil I own), to brush a thick layer of chocolate into my moulds. It solidified quickly. I spooned in the cooled salted caramel sauce, and then popped the tray back into the fridge. I wanted the chocolate and caramel to be cool enough that adding the closing layer of chocolate wouldn't melt or mess anything.

After just a few minutes (I'm not very patient), I took them back out and brushed on another layer of melted chocolate to close the bottoms. I tried to be careful around the edges to be sure they wouldn't leak caramel.

I normally would not chill chocolate, but I was worried about them releasing from the metal mould, so I popped the tray into the freezer for just a few minutes.

To release them, I banged the mould upside down on my clean wooden rolling board. Each thump of the mould dropped 1-3 chocolates perfectly out. My pre-schooler loved helping with this part of the process. We had one blooper when I didn't realize one had popped out, and crushed it with my next bang.

Unfortunately I forgot to tap the mould against the counter after I put the first layer of chocolate in, so there were some air bubbles, and I had to patch a few leaks. But I thought it was a good starting point, and my family loved them.