In this video, join Chef John as he takes you on a flavorful journey to create his Salted Pumpkin Caramels. Discover the secrets to crafting these sweet, salty, and utterly irresistible treats that capture the essence of fall. With Chef John's expert guidance, you'll master the art of caramel-making and delight in the rich, pumpkin-spiced goodness of these homemade candies. Get ready to satisfy your sweet tooth and impress your friends with this delightful autumn recipe!
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00:00 Hello this is Chef John from FoodWishes.com with salted pumpkin caramels.
00:07 That's right making your own homemade caramel candy is much easier than you
00:12 would think. Okay scooping out a pumpkin and making a jack-o'-lantern is much
00:17 harder and if you've never done this before this recipe would be a great
00:22 place to start. Speaking of which to get started I'm actually going to begin with
00:26 an optional step which would be to lightly toast some pumpkin seeds in a
00:30 dry pan set over medium heat and what we'll do is let those cook tossing often
00:35 until they start to take on a little bit of golden brown color which is gonna
00:40 look a little something like this. Right we don't want to go too dark otherwise
00:44 it can taste a little bit burnt and bitter. So once they do look like this
00:48 we'll go ahead and pull those off the heat and we'll transfer those into a
00:51 bowl and we'll let them cool while we prep our pan or in my case baking dish.
00:56 As you can probably see I've lightly buttered and what we'll do is line this
01:00 with two pieces of parchment paper cut to the same width as the inside and
01:04 after placing it in we will flip it over so both sides have some butter on it and
01:09 once that piece has been fitted in we'll take another piece and do the same thing
01:12 the other way and basically the butter underneath is going to keep everything
01:16 in place and then of course the butter on the other side is going to help
01:19 prevent the caramel from sticking and then once that's been lined we can toss
01:23 in our toasted pumpkin seeds and we can arrange those into a perfectly even
01:26 layer on the bottom. Oh and by the way if you use an 8x8 silicone pan we don't
01:32 need the parchment paper so if you do have one of those they are great for
01:36 this. And then once our pans been prepped we can move on to the pumpkin caramel
01:41 which is gonna start by adding some pure pumpkin puree to a small saucepan and
01:46 yes I did say pure pumpkin and not a pumpkin pie filling which has a lot of
01:51 other stuff in there so please double check the label and then to that we will
01:56 pour in some heavy cream and we'll grab a whisk and give it a quick mix and what
02:01 we'll do is warm this on the back of the stove since we're gonna eventually add
02:05 this to some very hot sugar and adding cold things to very hot sugar is not a
02:09 great idea as I'm gonna go over in a minute. Okay so our pumpkin and cream
02:14 mixture set and we can move on to our caramel base which of course is going to
02:19 include sugar and a lot of it and then to the sugar we will add two more
02:23 sweeteners in the form of some maple syrup. Okay any kind you want as long as
02:29 it's real and then we will follow that with a little bit of corn syrup which I
02:34 know a lot of people are afraid of and that's because they get it confused with
02:37 high fructose corn syrup which is the stuff in soda and processed snack foods
02:42 that will eventually kill you but a little bit of regular corn syrup in a
02:46 homemade candy recipe is totally and perfectly fine so don't be scared and it
02:52 is kind of key to the texture and that's it we'll finish up with a splash of cold
02:56 fresh water and then besides this in our pumpkin cream mixture we will also need
03:02 what we call in the caramel business the closers and they're called that because
03:07 these are the ingredients we stir in right at the end of the process and they
03:11 include some unsalted butter a little bit of plain white vinegar or lemon juice
03:16 a little bit of salt as well as some spices including cinnamon nutmeg and
03:22 clove and once we have everything together we can head to the stove and we
03:27 will place our sugar mixture on medium-high heat and we will give it a
03:30 whisk and we will wait for it to start to boil oh and by the way do not go
03:35 anywhere especially when you see this just starting to simmer since it's gonna
03:40 go from something that looks like this okay see all those little gentle bubbles
03:44 okay it's gonna go from that to this very quickly and if you're not paying
03:50 attention it can boil over causing a huge mess so what we'll do is reduce our
03:54 heat to medium and we'll very carefully give this a whisk at which point we're
03:58 gonna cook this stirring occasionally until it reaches the temperature of 245
04:04 degrees Fahrenheit and while that's happening we will place our cream mixture
04:08 on low so that it's very warm to hot when we add it which is gonna make
04:13 everything safer and easier and to monitor the sugar mixture we should
04:17 really be using a thermometer and these attachable candy style thermometers
04:21 would be the most popular choice but for something like this I always like to
04:25 double or triple check with other thermometers which I did here with a
04:29 laser style right you see that red light and of course we could always use one of
04:33 those probe thermometers we use for meat and I'm so glad I double checked with
04:37 the other thermometers because the candy thermometer was like 20 degrees off
04:41 which can happen sometimes if you drop them or they get banged around so I went
04:46 ahead and pulled that out and I relied on my other two kinds of thermometers
04:50 which were reading the same and like I said we want to get this up to 245
04:55 degrees and once it is we will very very carefully grab our cream mixture and we
05:00 will very slowly start whisking that in and because we warmed it first it's not
05:05 gonna bubble up violently which can and will happen if it's cold so to be safe
05:10 we'll start off slowly anyway but once we see there's no danger we can go ahead
05:15 and dump it all in and continue whisking until everything's thoroughly mixed and
05:19 then what we'll do is wait for this to come back to the boil still on medium
05:23 heat and again just like when we started we have to keep a close eye on it to
05:28 make sure it's not gonna bubble over and if you have to reduce your heat a little
05:31 bit go ahead all right that is just you making caramel but the good news is once
05:36 it starts to boil that's gonna be the highest it gets and the foaminess and
05:40 amount of bubbles will dissipate as this mixture rises in temperature and
05:44 speaking of temperature to finish this we will simply continue to cook this
05:49 whisking occasionally until our temperature rises back up to anywhere
05:54 between 240 to 245 degrees right that is the sweet spot
06:00 pun intended and when you're getting close you'll definitely notice a big
06:04 change visually okay this is what it looks like at about 220 something but
06:09 once we get to 240 or slightly over it's gonna look more like this which kind of
06:14 looks like something you dip your fingertip into to take a little taste
06:17 but don't you will get instant third-degree burns okay this is how jewel
06:22 thieves permanently remove their fingerprints so keep your fingers and
06:26 any other appendages away from this and once we are at the target temperature we
06:31 will turn off the heat and we will add the closers which again is some butter
06:36 some salt our spices and a tiny bit of vinegar or lemon juice and with the heat
06:43 off we'll go ahead and whisk that in and that's it once that butter disappears
06:47 and we feel like everything's been evenly mixed we will very very carefully
06:52 remove that from the heat and head over to our prep baking dish making sure
06:57 there's no one in the way and we'll go ahead and transfer that in very very
07:01 slowly at first since if you pour this mixture in too fast you will display
07:06 some of those pumpkin seeds and do you want to display seeds of course you
07:11 don't so we're gonna start off very slowly and then once the bottoms covered
07:16 and we have about a half inch in there we can pour it in a little bit quicker
07:20 but even towards the end we don't want to just dump a whole bunch into one spot
07:24 and then once that's been safely and successfully accomplished what we'll do
07:29 is place this on a towel and we will carefully give it the old tapa tapa a
07:34 few times just to kind of gently settle things down and bring any large air
07:39 bubbles up to the top at which point we'll simply let this cool for about 10
07:43 minutes before we sprinkle over our large crystal sea salt and by the way as
07:48 this sits you are gonna have a few seeds that flow to the top but that's fine
07:53 that's unavoidable and not a problem and if it's really gonna make you crazy you
07:58 could poke those down with a skewer but I can't even pretend to be concerned
08:02 because after about 10 minutes I'm gonna go ahead and sprinkle over my sea salt
08:05 crystals which is gonna camouflage any imperfections if we can even call them
08:11 that and yes I am gonna be fairly generous here since if we are gonna call
08:16 these salted pumpkin caramels then we should definitely see and taste some salt
08:20 but having said that I'm really not putting on as much as it looks like I am
08:24 since these flakes are very large and very thin but anyway suit yourself and
08:30 then what we'll do once this is salted is nothing we will simply let this cool
08:35 down to room temp at which point I like to wrap it and pop it in the fridge
08:39 until it's chilled so that it gets nice and firm which makes it very easy to cut
08:44 only if you have trouble getting it out of the dish it's because the butter is
08:48 cold and if that happens just warm up the bottom in a hot pan of water for a
08:52 few seconds and once that's out of the dish and we've peeled off the parchment
08:57 paper which thanks to that butter should not be too hard what we'll do is take a
09:01 knife and cut this into about 1 inch squares or in a perfect world exactly 1
09:07 inch squares and if this is cold which mine was it's gonna be very very firm so
09:13 be careful with the knife and if everything goes according to plan we
09:17 should get it perfectly clean perfectly smooth cut revealing a shiny cross
09:22 section that looks like glass which I'm happy to report we did accomplish I mean
09:28 look at that not to brag but that is perfect whoops hold on I got a little
09:32 piece of paper and then once that's been halved I like to cut it in quarters and
09:37 then if we cut each quarter into four strips and then cut across into four
09:41 squares we should theoretically get 64 beautifully uniform pieces although to
09:46 achieve that before you cut you'd probably have to score these to really
09:50 make it precise but I don't I just do it by eye and I had a kind of laugh at
09:55 myself here since I repositioned that knife a couple times before cutting it
10:00 unevenly but the good news is I got over my fear of uneven caramel pieces a long
10:05 time ago so it really was no big deal and as you can see no matter how you
10:11 cut these they're gonna be absolutely gorgeous and that's it once cut we can
10:16 go ahead and transfer those on to some nice looking serving platter or
10:19 something like this and after taking way too many contractually obligated
10:24 pictures I went ahead and grabbed one and went in for the official taste and
10:28 that my friends could not have come out any better
10:31 all righties hopefully you can kind of see from the teeth marks the texture was
10:35 spot-on okay these warm up a little bit they're not gonna be quite as firm but
10:40 even at room temp they will hold their shape and they won't be soft but they
10:45 will be perfectly chewy and then as far as the flavor goes these taste like
10:49 classic salted caramel with very pronounced notes of pumpkin pie and I
10:54 know I said it was optional but I really love the look and the taste and the
10:58 texture of those pumpkin seeds on the bottom but if you're not into that you
11:03 can make the recipe exactly the same way and not include those I mean you are
11:07 after all the Alexander Graham Bell of your salted pumpkin caramel or speaking
11:12 of inventors is an alternative instead of the pumpkin seeds you could use
11:17 walnuts or pecans and create your own version but like I said I think the
11:23 pumpkin seeds work incredibly well so I kind of hope you include them but either
11:28 way whether you're making these for your holiday dessert table or to give as a
11:32 very memorable edible gift or you just want to treat yourself to a well
11:36 deserved seasonal indulgence these really are truly incredible and fairly
11:42 simple to make which is why I really do hope you give them a try soon so please
11:48 follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written
11:51 recipe and much more info as usual and as always, enjoy!
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