Salted Caramel Lattes

Starbucks serve them, or at least they serve Caramel Lattes. We aren’t quite sure about the salt bit. Salted caramels, however, are divine. And as we contemplated this we started wondering what the ultimate salt caramel latte would be like? Surely it wouldn’t be like the lattes made with cheap syrups filled with 101 interesting fake flavors and preservatives. No, it would be like one of those caramel wafers that simply just melts into your coffee. It would be divine.

So we decided to find the recipe for the perfect salt caramels that we could use to melt over our coffee, or take some chunks and stir into the coffee, to flavor the entire drink.

We found it. After stumbling across quite a few “modern” recipes (if they have corn syrup in them they can’t be all that old), but as we wanted quality. Proper quality. We kept looking and finally found a traditional British recipe at http://britishfood.about.com.

Now as this makes caramels rather than sauce you just pop one into your latte for it to melt and chop one up into small pieces to sprinkle on top! Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 8 fl oz heavy/double cream
• 2 ½ oz/ 70g butter, cut into pieces
• 2 oz/60g honey
• ¼ cup/60ml water
• 7 oz/ 200g fine/caster sugar
• 1 tsp sea salt, plus extra for dusting, preferably Fleur de Sel
• ½ tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract

Preparation:

Line an 8″ square baking tin with parchment paper, brush lightly with oil.

• Over a gentle heat the cream, butter and salt together in a small saucepan. Once the butter has melted remove from the heat.
• Place the honey, water and sugar into a heavy bottomed saucepan, stir well. Place on a high heat and bring to a rapid boil, continue to boil the mixture until it begins to turn a golden brown then quickly remove from the heat.
• Slowly pour the butter and cream mixture into the bubbling sugar. The mixture will bubble fiercely so take care. Return the pan to the heat and cook for 10 minutes or until the caramel reaches 250°F/120°C. Once this temperature is reached, remove from the heat.
• Add the vanilla to the caramel and stir well then pour the mixture into the prepared tin. Leave to cool at room temperature, then once cool pop the dish into the refrigerator for a couple of hours to firm up. The toffee will be set but not rock hard.
• Tip the slab of toffee onto a cutting board. Cut into pieces the size you like sprinkly very lightly with salt. Or roll into a sausage shape and sprinkle with salt and cut the size of caramel you prefer. I also like to cut the caramel into thick pieces and roll gently into a ball between my palms, a bit of a sticky mess but looks good when it’s done.

NOTE: If the toffee has gone a little hard in the fridge, don’t worry it will soften once it reaches room temperature again.

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