three bowls

So I take back every nasty thing I have said about biscotti.

For all my recent frustration with that cooking project, biscotti have never actually injured me.  Whereas caramel?

That’s a second-degree burn, y’all.  I can’t wait to show some of the chefs at the shop my first serious cooking-related injury.  They’re always lifting hot pots without oven mitts and remarking about how they can’t feel it anymore.  Well, I think I might have permanently damaged the tip of my finger.  I feel very macho. 

I also feel very inconvenienced: turns out you use the tip of your index finger on your dominant hand kinda often! 

Actually, in caramel’s defense, while it’s certainly working my nerves, it’s quite possible this injury is primarily a result of ADD. 

I did read all the serious warnings that dessert guru David Lebovitz included in both his book The Perfect Scoop (from which I made, sans injury, an astoundingly delicious Salted Caramel Sauce) and in his recent posts on making caramel.  It gets very hot, he clearly warned.  And when I made the first batch, I was on high alert, wearing silicone over mitt and backing away from the pot cautiously when I added the cream.

However, this time, I got…um…distracted and forgot and touched some too soon and this is what happens. 

IT REALLY HURTS. 

I was attempting to make this Epicurious recipe for Peanut Butter Caramel Sauce for eatin’ with the ice cream I made (which was both the first custard-style AND the first chocolate ice cream I’ve made, but I’ll post on that later). 

I tasted a similar sauce a couple times at Oliver’s Twist, a cocktail bar up in Phinney.  One half of the couple that owns the place – a very nice guy named Dan Braun – had taught a class at the shop last year, and his food was extremely tasty, and so, as one might expect, the cocktail bar’s food did not disappoint.

One of the sweets they have is a chocolate gelato with sea salt and a peanut butter caramel sauce.  The gelato was great, but it’s the sauce that makes the dish so memorable.  It’s like the grown-up, elegant and refined version of a Butterfinger flavor, rich and slightly salty, with that particular umami satisfaction of the peanut flavor.

So I was determined to try to make it myself, and found the Epicurious recipe.  My first batch was an utter failure – the caramel never really happened, just crunchy bits that dissolved then reappeared when I added the cream, and they wouldn’t melt.  One cup of cream wasted.

Second batch melted a little better at the start but once again, when I added the cream, instead of bubbling furiously as I was warned it would, it just sort of caused the caramel to seize up into a solid mass.

This time I decided to power through as the Epicurious instructions were kind of ambiguous.  Eventually, the majority of the caramel melted again, so, shrugging, I removed the last hard bit that would not melt and decided to complete the recipe anyway.

After adding the peanut butter and melting it, I found the sauce was thick and tasty, but not the ideal I was aiming for. 

For one thing, it was grainy, which might be due to an error in how I cooked the sugar originally or perhaps related to the fact that I am using slightly less-than-white organic fair trade sugar.  I don’t really know how this impacts things, but David Lebovitz notes that any impurity could, and so it’s a possibility.  Luckily, I am working a class with a candy expert in the next few weeks so I plan to pick her brain.

The other area in which this sauce was deficient was that the flavor was very one-dimensionally sweet peanut butter.  More Chick-o-Stick or those Brach's Candy Peanuts than Butterfinger.  The Oliver’s Twist sauce has a complexity and richness, a deep note underneath the sweetness.  I don’t know if they use butter, as well, or simply that properly caramelizing the sugar would develop that flavor.  I think I will continue to experiment.