A lot of recipes suggest adding corn syrup or honey to the sugar in order to make crystallization less likely. I’m not in the US, so corn syrup pretty much doesn’t exist, but I have a jar of raw and therefore very crystalized honey that I got from a friend who keeps bees. Will using that still help? I’m thinking that all the imperfections like pollen or wax in raw honey will just make the caramel even more likely to crystalize.
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According to this honey can’t prevent crystallisation, but it sounds like golden syrup will work if you have access to it.
this, yes.
Also, starches as xmunk noted can help, too.
as a side note… apple (cider) vinegar added to the soft carmels is amazing. balance is kinda difficult, I found the potency changes depending on how far you take it (ball, soft crack, etc.) but… its a favorite around here.
Another (maybe not so) surprising favorite is coffee. (which I may have discovered accidentally when doing a coffee syrup reduction. first time was an accident. the next weren’t. use decaff if you’re not an addict.)
I haven’t tried vinegar, but I added a squirt of lemon juice last time. It worked to prevent crystallization, but the caramels tasted kinda tart so I think I’ll abstain from using acids in the future. First time I hear about starches being used for that, but I might give it a try.
This was the recipe i started with
You can use golden syrup in exchange for the corn syrup, it’s not quite tart in the end- it tastes like a carmel-covered apple. I’ve found going a little harder or softer changes what hits you first-apple or carmel. You lose the sharpness from the vinegar side, so its not like eating vinegar.
But, eh, any sort of thing that’s a water base can be used to add flavor; it just stalls at the boiling temp longer while the water cooks off. Juice, coffee, tea. Milk or cream would change the consistency though.
I think you need a starch to prevent crystallization. You might have better luck adding rice/potato/corn starch to make sure the caramels come out creamy. Also this is mostly relevant to soft caramels, if you’re making caramel hard candies you can probably just allow a certain amount of crystallization.
Interesting, never heard of starches being used for that. All I found online suggested invert sugar like corn syrup or some type of acid, for example lemon juice. And yes, I’m going for a soft, chewy texture.
So the trick with starches are that you’re adding the thick gooeyness manually instead of relying on the specific temperature transformation of the sugar. It essentially let’s you cheat since you only need to toast the sugar for flavor and the starch will emulate the firm ball texture.
I’d note that you can make a gooey caramel with only sugar though but you really want a candy thermometer because you’re dealing with pretty precise ranges of temperatures here king arthur flour has a good breakdown of what’s going on and if you want to make it starchless this will probably help: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2022/12/12/how-to-make-caramel
