High Altitude Caramel Adventure

The Martha Stewart recipe promised soft, chewy caramels. I’d never made caramel in any form before ever, and followed the steps precisely using a handy candy thermometer.

But the solid brick that resulted was no match for the sharpest knife in my Colorado kitchen. Utterly crushed by the wasted ingredients and effort, I blamed myself. Must have done something wrong.

My second attempt — still not recognizing the issue — was a close call. I managed to slice sticks out of the chunk. The caramel wasn’t soft. Only one person enjoyed those dental-disasters-waiting-to-happen. About a year after that, a spiced cake that was supposed to have a caramel base ended up with crystallized sugary water instead.

Much, much later it dawned on me that high altitude messes with candy-making.

I started avoiding recipes that called for caramel. Then Deb posted a perfect tarte tatin on Smitten Kitchen. “Three-quarters of the apple-cooking is done on the stove in the caramel; the rest happens in the oven,” she wrote. This being a new year and a new decade and all, maybe it was finally time to face my sugary fears.

Kelley from Mountain Mama Cooks posted a high-altitude recipe for whiskey caramel sauce that I bookmarked ages ago. That seemed like a safe place to start, especially since it only calls for a tablespoon of butter instead of an entire stick.

Following her caramel sauce recipe one Sunday afternoon raised some deep questions, though. What does “low heat” actually mean? When is melted sugar truly melted? Who am I? What am I doing here? Okay so those last two came up while I was staring at the sugar, which hadn’t so much as changed color after 20 minutes on a burner set to 2.0 level heat.

Guillaume urged me to raise the heat. I resisted at first, fearful of uneven melting or — horrors — burning the sugar. Then I relented, went up to 3.0, and changed the heat area to the wider circumference setting. Finally it melted. And smelled good. Hey, this is looking promising!

But the second that the cold cream hit the warm caramel, huge candy clumps formed around the whisk. If Kelley hadn’t said something about hardened caramel in the recipe, I’d probably have given up right there. But eventually those hard chunks really did melt.

Sure, the sauce turned right back into candy when I spooned it over extremely cold vanilla ice cream, but it tasted pretty darned good. And Guillaume discovered that gently heating the leftovers to a higher temperature made the sauce stay softer longer.

Although I’m still not super confident about caramel after this one try, maybe there’s a tarte tatin in my future after all.

The clump of caramel candy is temporary. I swear.

High Altitude Bourbon Caramel Sauce

⅔ C. white sugar
½ C. heavy or whipping cream
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 Tbsp. bourbon

Put sugar in a medium-sized dry metal saucepan. Cook the sugar over medium-low heat, until the sugar melts and turns a pale golden color. Be patient — this can take more than 20 minutes. Swirl the pan to ensure even melting. Do not stir it.

Once the sugar is fully melted, keep swirling the pan until the melted sugar turns a deep golden brown, around 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the burner. Off-heat, carefully pour the heavy cream into the pan, stirring with a whisk. Be careful: The mixture bubbles up a lot. It will also harden some of the caramel. That’s okay. Keep going.

Return the pan to the burner and simmer the mixture, stirring with a whisk, until all the hardened caramel dissolves completely. This can take a few minutes. Some bubbling and foaming are normal at this point.

Add the butter and keep stirring until it’s just incorporated. Now remove the caramel sauce from the burner and stir in the bourbon. Serve it warm.

For any leftovers, pour the caramel sauce into a glass container, let it cool, and then refrigerate it. When you’re ready to use the sauce again, gently re-warm the glass in a bit of water on the stovetop.