Watson

I mentioned these in the "The Person Under Me" thread and received requests and private messages for the recipe, so here goes. I only make these at Christmas as the cooking/wrapping is a lot of work, but they are worth it.

If you haven't made candy before, this is a good recipe because I have never had these not turn out.

1 cup butter ( I use salted)
2 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
1 can sweetened condensed milk (1 1/4 cups)
1 cup light corn syrup (If you don't use the clear stuff they turn out really dark.)
1 tsp vanilla
2 cans (I'd say it was 8-10 oz, but I don't have it in front of me.) cashews pieces, salted. Really, however much you want. I like mine buried on the bottom of the caramel for the most part.

Line 2 jelly roll pans with aluminum foil, wrapping around the edges so it is secure.
Butter evenly all over or you will never get the caramel off of it.

Shake your jar of nuts to shake up the salt off the bottom, then spread a layer of nuts across the 1st pan and about 1/2 way the second pan.

In a heavy bottomed, large saucepan, melt butter, stir in brown sugar, sweetened milk and corn syrup. Mix well. The butter won't all mix in at this point. It's OK.

Clip on candy thermometer so it doesn't touch the bottom.

Cook over medium heat, stirring pretty much the entire time right down to the bottom, so it doesn't burn on the bottom, until it reaches 248 degrees. Firm Ball stage. It should boil steadily 15-20 minutes to get to this stage. (Could go quicker, depending on how heavy your saucepan is.)

A note to those who haven't made candy....the temperature will hang out at 225/230 for what seems like a long time and then it will go up quickly, so you have to watch it.

Remove from heat, stir in vanilla. Be careful because it will spit when the vanilla hits it.

Quickly pour mixture over cashews to cover. If it seems like you have extra, pour that over one end of the extra pan to keep it thick enough to make more caramels. You can see from the picture below that I got about a pan and a half, although I didn't have an extra jelly roll pan so I used a cake pan. Don't try to scrape the bottom of the pan really hard...there will be darkened bits on it and it will just make your caramels unattractive.

Immediately put hot water and detergent in your pot along with your utensils so the caramel doesn't harden on them.

Cool and cut into 1" squares.

I wrap them in candy foils that I get from the cake decorating store (minus the papery piece that sometimes comes with them.) But, I've also used cut up pieces of aluminum foil. I usually let them set a couple of days, uncovered before I start to wrap them.

This seems like a lot of instructions, but it is quite an easy recipe. As a chef, I tend to give a lot of detail.

Any questions, let me know.

Here's what I got out of one recipe last year....[ATTACH=CONFIG]603642[/ATTACH]

Watson