Chocolate Caramels
My grandfather smoked his whole life. As a child, I found the smell of his tobacco unbearable, and my mother, on more than one occasion, had to hang my clothes and soft toys out in the bitter cold of January to get rid of the clinging, permeating odours of tobacco after a visit to his house. But, decades later, when hunting through a sagging stack of hand-me-down linens from his home, long after he had passed, I unexpectedly pulled out a handful of his handkerchiefs. That earthy, acrid perfume of lingering tobacco hit me in the face like a flat palm and staggered me - suddenly, I was a pre-schooler, skidding, sock-footed, on the polished floors of the hallway that bisected his house, coming in from climbing the craggy apple tree and leaving apples for the deer on his front step, watching the progress of my little yogurt cup boat in the creek that snaked through his backyard. There was chocolate milk on offer in his house, a special kind that I didn’t have at home, and if I think about it long enough, I can recall the way it tasted. It’s funny how smells and tastes seem to reach back farther into our memories than just about anything else, pulling us into times long since forgotten.
I suspect that the old-fashioned candies Anne raves about in this week’s chapter might have similar effects - pop one in your mouth and be transported to the carefree days of youth, recalling the sorts of candies that your great-aunt might put out in little cut-glass bowls (or is that just me?) Whether from nostalgia, or simply a taste for chocolatey, melt-in-your-mouth sweets, or both, people have loved and clamoured for chocolate candies - just like the ones about which Anne waxes poetic.
To that end, dear reader, let us turn our attention to recipes. On the 6th of March, 1881, the New York Times published the following recipe for chocolate caramels:
“Take of grated chocolate, milk, molasses, and sugar, each one cupful, and a piece of butter the size of an egg; boil until it will harden when dropped into cold water; add vanilla; put in a buttered pan, and before it cools mark off in square blocks. ”
I am here to warn you off, dear reader: this recipe produces a sort of incorrigible chocolate sludge, which cannot be corralled into the ‘square blocks’ as directed, because it refuses to harden. Besides, who measures butter in eggs? What is going on? Instead, I offer you a modern version, which is, admittedly, rather more like fudge - but still delicious. This recipe comes from the Anne of Green Gables cookbook by Kate Macdonald.
Ingredients:
1 c (240 g) unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
3 oz (85 g) semi-sweet chocolate
1 1/4 c (380 g) sweetened condensed milk
1/4 c (80 g) corn syrup
2 1/4 c (495) firmly packed brown sugar
Instructions:
Butter an 8 x 8 (20 cm x 20 cm) baking pan and set aside.
Put your butter, chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, corn syrup, and brown sugar in a large, heavy saucepan. Mix with a wooden spoon.
Place the saucepan over medium heat, bring the mixture to a boil, and let the chocolate melt completely.
Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook the mixture for 30 minutes. It should boil gently all the while, but not too vigorously. Stir the mixture constantly with the wooden spoon. The candy will burn easily if it is not mixed. Call it an arm workout, and focus on how delicious your candy will be when you’re done!
When it’s cooled, the candy will be very thick. Pour it into the baking pan and set it on a cooling rack.
Let the candy cool completely, about 1 1/2 hours, before cutting it into 3/4-inch (2 cm) squares. Put out a stacked plateful in the centre of your next knitting circle or quilting bee, and watch them disappear! Enjoy!
Jennifer