Treacle-tastic

Ok, so this has been laying dormant for awhile now and lately I’ve been staring at my immense collection of cookbooks and magazines with recipes in them, thinking about how little I’ve tried from them. I figured what the hell, why not write about some of these crazy lil adventures.

I can’t help myself when it comes to the Martha Stewart holiday home made gift magazine special she puts out every winter. Generally this woman scares me and I’d refused to touch anything by her because of her obsession with perfection, which with my clumsy nature is an impossibility for me. However, someone I babysit for regularly, who wanted me to become a pastry chef, a few years back, gave me the Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook for Christmas. I’m now a convert! Well.. not exactly, but I no longer shudder and turn up my nose at her stuff. Anyway this year I’ve been obsessing over this year’s and last year’s handmade gift magazines, imagining all the wonderful things I could be making, except I wasn’t (note: due to family drama and personal blah blah blah I’ve been suffering from get-inspired-and-fall-flat-on-my-ass-in-front-of-a-screen-itis, ie a case of doing fuck all about it). While I was rummaging for something to make dinner with one day I came across my candy thermometer that was in my stocking last year and realised not only had I not used it, it was still in its packaging and by golly I was going to use it before my next stocking was stuffed. So taking the recipe for chewy caramels from last years magazine and my not so new, but very unused candy thermometer in hand I set out to make these.

The unfortunate thing about being inspired for the first time in a long time is the forgetting basic steps, ie common mishaps and the things you do to avoid them. In other words I didn’t check to see if I had everything I needed before I started measuring and pouring ingredients. Go me. What was missing you ask? I didn’t have any corn syrup, or I did but it was something like 2 tbs vs the 1 cup I would need (I had decided to half the recipe because 150 candies – 4 cups of sugar and 2 of corn syrup – sounded like an awful lot for a first go). I knew exactly who to blame for this and the reasons why it had happened (see note at bottom). I didn’t cry though, nope! I thought no worries, I’ve wanted to try out substituting my trusty tate n lyles brand golden syrup as a replacement for corn syrup for awhile. With my new found enthusiasm I go rummaging through the cupboard where it is and low and behold there’s even less of that in it’s jar then there was of the corn syrup! Now I am thinking about crying. Finally I give up on the idea of golden chewy caramels as my mind wanders to the gingerbread that had been made and the molasses that went along with it. So, my caramels turned into treacle toffee. They also turned out a bit harder than I had intended but I think that is because I’d spent so much time being paranoid about avoiding the thermometer touching the bottom of the pan (a big no no) that I didn’t have it submerged enough so the reading was not accurate and I may have overdone them a bit. ;o On the bright side, they are lovely, sticky, chewy and tasty and have made my parents extremely happy.

Another mistake I made, in an attempt to save time and paper, is that I decided not to individually wrap them. This is fine, I still don’t think you have to, but for the love of your sanity do not do what I did and just dump them all into a tin together so they settle into a retarded, hard to pry apart lump. Instead maybe cut parchment rounds and separate layers of the toffees with these. – I may or may not post embarrassing pictured of this disaster later.

*note: So the reason for the lack of corn syrup has two parts. Firstly after reading a chunk of Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma for a class I took on eating local I have a hard time eating things I know have corn syrup in and feel horribly guilty using it in a recipe. Secondly in a frenzy of pms and 1950s American house wife inspired cooking ( I was reading Kerouac’s On The Road for a class at the time and we spent a lot of time on the 1950’s American woman) I created something I like to call marshmallow-bum pie – which is a whole other story and took up a lot of my corn syrup.