I live forty-eight hundred feet above sea level, and thus those charts require math. The extent of my interest in math is how many 0.685 ounce hand-dipped chocolates does it take to fill a one-pound gift box. This is not a trick question you find in some social media quizzes. The answer is about 23. Even that math doesn’t always hold up. Sometimes the pieces are bigger and I only get 21 or 20 pieces of cupped chocolates in a box. But that has nothing to do with temperature, so let’s move back to the subject at hand.

When we cook our caramel, we try to yank it off the stove right when it hits 232 degrees. But what triggers this article about temperatures is both the altitude math issue and our candy thermometer. Then you have the famous candy terms called soft ball, firm ball, and hard ball. Makes me think of Goldilocks. So which temperature is right? Forget the math if you are at forty-eight hundred foot elevation, and go to the cold water method. It’s easier but trickier.

When the candy is looking like you think it’s close, drop some in a glass of very cold water. (I say very cold because some of you reading this might think cold is anything lower than 98.6. Nope, go for a glass of ice cold water at about 40 degrees.) If the syrup gets stringy but not quite anything substantial, it’s worthless. Some people call this soft ball if you can get it to take shape. If it holds its shape but is still soft, it’s firm ball. If it will ball up and still squish a bit, then it’s hard ball. So in other words, without lots of trial and error, this method doesn’t work so great either.  Here’s why.

When we make caramel for our corn or our apples, our mathified temperature is 232 degrees. If the steam on the thermometer will give way for a second and I can actually read it and it says 230 I get ready to pull it. Well, if I try the water method by the time I check the candy in the cold water, the temperature rose to 234. So I tested a soft ball but I pulled a hard ball. Maybe I’m just slow. What’s the difference? The softness of the caramel is the difference. The soft ball caramel is a bit stickier on corn or apples. The hard ball caramel is stiffer and on corn crunchier. In these two instances, it’s a matter of preference.

When my wife watches the temperature and I play the water game, we usually get dang close to perfect. Mostly because she ignores me and follows the thermometer. But she is kind and lets me play with the water, so I feel important.

So here’s the point I should have just started with. With candy, we just boil sugar, and water which we will call a syrup. The highest temperature that this sugar syrup reaches determines what the syrup will be like when it cools. When the water evaporates and the sugar concentrates in it, the temperature of the mixture rises. In other words, the more water evaporates, the harder the remaining sugar becomes.

Now if you’ve followed a while, in a recent post we examined all the ingredients and broke them down into three: Water, sugar and fat. The fat is to keep the sugar under control and make the sugar perform better. There is water in the fat (cream, milk, corn syrup, butter) So usually when we make candy, we’re not actually boiling water per se.

So for you non-mathematicians, or is it non-mathologists, here is a candy temperature chart a-la Merrell’s Millcreek Utah kitchen. (For you math guys – they represent a 207 degree boiling point rather than the 212 sea level boiling point, I think. Remember, I was an art guy in school, not a brainiac.)

The post The Simple Truth About Temperature first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

Let me sum up. We use two different caramel recipes, one in the spring for caramel corn and one in the fall for caramel apples, hand-dipped chocolates (turtles), and just plain caramel hand-dipped. The conflict which caused my brain to go down totally unnecessary rabbit holes was why, since caramel is water, fat, and sugar, do we have two different recipes?

Nobody could or would answer that cosmically important question, so I pulled out my science hat, which I admit hadn’t been used since my chemistry class in college 43 years ago, and figured it out.

Remember caramel is sugar, water, and fat. That’s it. Butter, corn syrup, cream, milk, brown sugar, etc, are just forms of those three ingredients.  So here’s what I did when I dusted off my science hat.

Utilizing dozens of website ingredient conversion tools, I converted the ingredients from the two recipes into a common measurement. In other words, I converted ounces, pounds, cups, sticks, etc. into grams. Take a look.

The spring caramel recipe translated like this with a total of 2,532 grams of ingredients.

The fall caramel recipe translated like this with 1,929 grams. Notice it’s smaller in volume, but not to worry, we scientifically superior-minded people can figure it out.

Each of these ingredients contains a percentage of water, a percentage of fat, and a percentage of sugar. So leaving volume behind, we could translate each ingredient into how much water, sugar, and fat it contributed to the whole. Take a look at this chart. It’s dull but brilliant, kind of like some of my rich friends. My interesting friends usually aren’t rich.

Notice how the percentages play out. For those of you like me who like pictures. This is the exciting answer to my cosmic quandary.

The two recipes are almost identical. So what’s the difference? Why does one have brown sugar and less butter? Why does one rely on cream and the other evaporated milk? Well if I answer that question here, I won’t have anything to explore in the next post.

We cooked both recipes side by side and found something very interesting. They both cause tooth decay and expansion of the belt! Check out the next post and I’ll share the very scientific or possibly very culinary results.

The post The Tale of Two Caramels first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

Caramel, the true color of Fall

If you’ve just read the spring caramel post, hold on to your dentures because the fall caramel, with its simpler recipe, delivers a caramel with such subtle differences, that a peasant, unfamiliar with the nuances of culinary sublimity, fails to grasp the unparalleled importance of the need for two recipes. Don’t feel discouraged if you still wonder why we use two different recipes. You will want to read the Kent Merrell science behind the two caramel recipes, “The Tale of Two Caramels” click here.

Here’s my mother’s recipe. Please note how pure it is.

4 Cups Sugar

½ lb. Butter – two sticks

2 Cup Corn Syrup

2 – 12 oz. Cans Evaporated Milk

Melt the butter in a large pan on the stovetop. Cooking on high; before you burn the butter, add the corn syrup, then the sugar. Stirring constantly throughout the cooking process. Bring to a full boil. Clean the sides of the pan occasionally with a wet pastry brush to keep sugar from crystallizing on the sides. Add the evaporated milk, a little at a time, so the candy doesn’t stop boiling. Cook to 230 degrees. Pour into the buttered tray. Usually, a 9 x 13 pan works well.

Do not pour on foil or waxed paper that hasn’t been buttered or greased well.

We use a 6-quart size pan for this recipe.

One pan makes about 136 hand dippable caramels. (Or you can leave them un-dipped). The recipe also makes about 25 caramel apples. One batch makes about 2 pans of turtles (5 rows each) and 1 pan of pecan rolls. We will explore the science behind turtles in a future article so don’t fret here.

Now, move on to the “Tale of Two Caramels.”

The post Fall Caramel first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

In the article about caramel’s history, we focused on the four ingredients that make caramel the masterpiece that it is; sugar, water, and fat. When I readied to share the recipe for the caramel that we dip, to my utter shock, I found additional ingredients, corn syrup, vanilla, and a touch of salt.

That discovery demands an explanation, or clarification, or rebuttal, whichever you choose. Was the previous article wrong, naive, or just inaccurate?

So, delving into the corn syrup ingredient controversy, I found myself vindicated. Corn syrup is not an additional ingredient at all, it’s just another form of caramel’s sugar. Ha!

 But to really understand, you don’t want to miss the post about why and how two recipes with ingredients so different than just water, sugar, and fat, make essentially the same product. 

But enough pontificating here’s our Spring Caramel recipe.

This caramel recipe is the recipe we use for making caramel corn. Here I share both the caramel and the popcorn recipe. Here you go.

1 lb. brown sugar (2 cups = 1 pound)

2 lbs. white sugar

1 large can Evaporated milk

2 cups whipping cream

1/4 lb. butter

2 cups white Karo

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla.

The first thing is to pop the popcorn. No microwave trash or tricky stuff here. We use a large 8 qt. pot and put 2 tablespoons of oil with 1 cup of Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn on high heat and stir with a spoon until the first kernel pops. You can watch all the kernels pop all over the place or put the lid on. 

By stirring the kernels in the hot oil, they heat evenly and will thus pop feverishly, evenly, and quickly. I have multiple huge bowls ready to receive the popped corn.  We make 4 to 5 batches of popped corn. To remove any un-popped kernels, I of course wash my hands then take handfuls of popcorn and with open fingers, shake out any kernels and transfer the corn to another bowl until we have removed as many un-popped kernels as possible.)

Then we make the caramel.

In a large 8-quart pot, we melt the butter, add the sugars, evaporated milk, and cream. Bring these to a boil stirring constantly.

Once you reach the boiling point, remove from the heat, and add the two cups of corn syrup and the salt. Put it back on the stove and stir constantly. During the boiling process, much of the water boils out and the caramel becomes thicker and stickier. 

In Utah where we are, we cook to the softball stage which is 230 degrees. One degree one way or another will make it gooeyier or crunchier. We take it off the heat, add the one teaspoon of vanilla, and stir it in.

Then we pour it over the popcorn in small batches. We put about four to five cups of popcorn into an empty bowl and pour a drizzle of caramel over it as we stir.

Once the popcorn is covered, place it on a buttered cookie sheet or platter and continue the process until you’ve covered all the corn. You get to choose how thick to make the caramel on the corn. Some like it light and others like it thick.

Pour over popcorn.  Use warm corn if possible.  When the caramel is ready, Kent will put about 4 cups of popcorn into an empty bowl and Marca will pour a drizzle of caramel over it while Kent stirs the corn to get it covered with the caramel.  Kent has buttered 4 cookie sheets ready for the caramel corn.  He keeps doing that same thing until the caramel is used up.

If you like Cracker Jacks add peanuts, but Cracker Jacks will never match up to this caramel corn.

The post Spring Caramel first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

We’ve got heavy cream, heavy whipping cream, whipping cream, cream, evaporated milk, canned milk, condensed milk, sweet and condensed milk, half-and-half, whole milk, 2% milk, low-fat milk, and nonfat milk, which my grandchildren when given non-fat or skim milk, claim is just white water.

In this post we’re not talking about the junior league milk like coconut and almond milk on this team. Why? Because I don’t find it in any of my hand-dipped chocolate recipes. So as not to offend, I do concede there are games where the minor league milks perform valiantly.

Let’s move on. Hopefully, next time you’re standing there with the dairy case door open, and all the milk team is lined up, side by side on the shelves; you can think of the dairy case as the sidelines, the teammates on the bench ready to be sent into the game.

It wouldn’t really matter which player on the milk bench you send in, if it didn’t matter that each player will ultimately affect the consistency, texture, and flavor of the game.

In reality, the basic difference is fat content. Because the percentage of fat plays such an important role in performance; we’ll spend most of this article on that. The more the milkfat, the merrier in my opinion.

Meet our All-star milk lineup, introducing Team Milk

Let’s look at fresh milk straight from the cow. Early in our marriage, my wife and I bought a home in the middle of Northern Utah farmland. We leased the back half of our property to a neighbor who used our field for his cow. The lease payments consisted of fresh raw milk. Yep, it was liquid gold with all of its varied uses. That’s perhaps why I am so well-rounded. But I, and our children all have strong bones. Raw fresh milk is loaded with nutrients, after all, it’s designed to fully nourish a newborn. Just look at raw milk’s stat sheet.

Just one cup (244 grams) of whole cow’s raw milk contains:

• Calories: 150
• Protein: 8 grams
• Fat: 8 grams
• Calcium: 30% of the RDA
• Vitamin A: 6% of the RDA, along with the vitamin A, there’s magnesium,  zinc and thiamine (B1)
• Iron: 6% of the RDA
• Cholesterol: 10% of the RDA
• Sugars: 12 grams


Raw milk’s not just an excellent source of protein, it contains hundreds of different healthy fatty acids, including conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and omega-3s, high amounts of beneficial antioxidants, such as vitamin E and beta-carotene. The list goes on.

But since I don’t have a cow any longer, at least not that often, I have to recruit my players from the dairy case.

When it comes to milk there is much more than just the fat, but let’s stick with the fat for now.

Getting over the goal line requires a given combination of fat, sugar, and water. The amount of each or combination will vary the texture, flavor, and color. Different combinations of the eleven milks team members make up the play. Sometimes it’s a pouring play, other times a dipping play.

(A special note to all you sciency, chemists who think you know your way around confections, I welcome your comments. I don’t necessarily need to be the expert. I just need the candy fix and I need it as creamy and flavorful as possible. If you can help me out, do so… please.)

Heavy Cream and Heavy Whipping Cream

Heavy cream  is a clutch player for both sweet and savory recipes. Heavy cream contains between 36 and 40 percent milkfat and is thicker than light cream, whipping cream, half-and-half, whole milk, and evaporated milk. Heavy cream’s high-fat content means that it won’t curdle when heated, and is the best choice for whipping into stiff peaks.

Is heavy cream the same as heavy whipping cream?

Heavy cream and heavy whipping cream are actually the same product just with two different jerseys. According to the FDA, heavy cream and heavy whipping cream must contain at least 36% milkfat. Next time you see heavy cream and heavy whipping cream seated on the grocery store sidelines, you won’t have to think twice about which one to send into the game. Different position, same delicious dairy performance.

Heavy cream makes everything richer, creamier, and tastier.

Cream and Whipping Cream

Whipping cream contains between 30% to 35% milkfat, which means that it is a lighter product than heavy cream (heavy whipping cream). You guessed it, cream and whipping cream play the same position, just depends on what name was printed on the jersey.

The 5 percentage point difference in milkfat may not seem like a playmaker, but it can drastically change the richness and thickness of the finished confection. If you’ve ever scouted the performance, you know the lower fat content in whipping cream means that it won’t ever achieve perfectly stiff peaks when whipped. So, if you need to impress the crowds with whipped cream on pies or cakes, use heavy cream.

Half-and-Half

You might notice the trend here. The main difference between half-and-half and heavy cream is the milkfat content. Half-and-half is literally made with equal parts of heavy cream and milk. The FDA requires that half-and-half contains between 10.5% and 18% milkfat. Remember that heavy cream, on the other hand, is a thicker and richer cream that contains at least 36% milkfat, nearly double that of half-and-half.

Watch out for fat-free half-and-half. If you take out the fat, it’s something else. Likely skim milk with corn syrup and a bunch of other stuff. Stay with the real stuff. If you don’t want fat, eat vegetables instead of candy.

Real half-and-half is lower in fat and offers some benefits of creamy milk but it won’t whip like cream.

When to use half-and-half

If you’re trying to cut back on fat, half-and-half is a suitable substitute. However, don’t try to whip half-and-half for whipped cream; the product doesn’t contain nearly enough milkfat to form luscious stiff peaks that will hold their own shape.

Half-and-half is the perfect way to add a silky richness to caramel sauce.

Heavy Cream and Milk

You can easily make half-and-half by mixing equal parts heavy cream and milk and shaking vigorously.

You can also use half-and-half in recipes that call for nearly equal parts of heavy cream and milk. For example, instead of using 1 cup of heavy cream and 1 cup of milk, you can safely substitute for 2 cups of half-and-half.

A mid-article sum-up.

•               Heavy cream contains between 36 and 40% milkfat.
•               Whipping cream contains between 30 and 35% milkfat.
•               Light cream contains between 18 and 30% milkfat.
•               Half-and-half contains between 10.5 and 18% milkfat.

Evaporated Milk

Our other crowd-pleasing favorite is evaporated milk (which is not the same as condensed milk) but (is the same as canned milk) but (condensed milk which also comes in a can usually brings to mind Sweet and Condensed Milk). Get it right. And you will if you keep reading.

Evaporated milk is milk. It’s usually sold in cans, and made by removing about 60 percent of the water from ordinary milk. Milk is homogenized and then the water is removed with gentle heat. The more dense milk is sealed in cans which are then heated to kill any bacteria in the milk. The process of heating the evaporated milk in the cans imparts a slightly sweet flavor to the milk and it’s just a bit darker in color than ordinary milk. It has a similar viscosity to half-and-half.

It adds more creaminess than fresh milk with less fat than regular cream. It is also frequently used in place of half-and-half. Evaporated milk tastes like milk but with a thicker, less watery consistency.

Sweet and Condensed Milk

Condensed Milk Vs Evaporated Milk

As I just pointed out so eloquently, it’s important to note that condensed milk and evaporated milk are not the same player. Yet, evaporated milk is basically unsweetened condensed milk. Both of these players have about 60% of their water removed. However, they are not interchangeable at all — they are very different in consistency, flavor, and function. On average, sweet and condensed milk contains about 45% sugar which is added after condensing the milk. This helps give the ingredients their thick, shiny, gooey consistency.

I consider sweet and condensed milk as a special-teams player because, it gives that little extra point or when you can’t get over the goal line the right way or you’re impatient, you score your sweet goal the lazy way. Thus, Sweetened Condensed Milk is an incredibly functional player. Naturally, it sweetens up the playing field.

But, it also functions as a tenderizing ingredient that adds moisture. And, the high amounts of sugar in the product helps give the golden-brown color when the sugars caramelize during heating.

What adds to the confusion is that both evaporated or sometimes called canned milk and sweet and condensed milk are both sold in cans, which helps preserve this perishable ingredient. What also helps extend the shelf life in sweetened condensed milk is the high concentration of sugar and lack of water. All-in-all, when unopened, this product can last for years!

Heavy cream has an endless amount of uses. It helps enrich recipes while adding a ton of moisture. It can add a bit of color to baked items when the sugars caramelize.

Plus, it is a fantastic ingredient that can help bind others together. It adds tenderness, creaminess, and an overall softer texture to any item.

Now as for 2% and 1% low-fat milk and non-fat or skim milk, they’re seldom sent into the candy game. They’re too lightweight for the demanding plays we run in the hand-dipped chocolates Super Bowl.

I think it really comes down to richness, creaminess, and smoothness,

Now the most important thing about regular whole milk is that it is the most thoughtful and compassionate and universal ingredient in hand-dipped chocolates. It, without any selfish thought, gives of itself wholly to make sure your freshly baked chocolate chip cookies don’t get lonely. Not to mention it contributes to both the caramel and cream centers we use with hand-dipped chocolates by adding moisture, fat, and sugars.

https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/heavy-cream-substitute

http://milkfacts.info/Milk%20Composition/Milk%20Composition%20Page.htm

The post The All-star Milk Lineup – Team Milk first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

My discovery requires an explanation, or clarification, or admission of my ignorance; whatever.

Was the previous article wrong, naïve, or just inaccurate?

So, delving into the corn syrup ingredient controversy, I found myself vindicated. Corn syrup is not an additional ingredient at all, it’s just another form of sugar. Ha!

Corn syrup is simply a liquid sweetener. It’s a sugar made from cornstarch. Corn syrup comprises pure glucose, a simple sugar. Table sugar, the white crystal sugar I dump in my Cheerios and you into your coffee in the morning, consists of sucrose, which comprises glucose and fructose.

Because of its properties as a liquid sweetener, we use corn syrup in candies to provide shine and to prevent the crystallization of the sugars. Corn syrup also provides moisture to caramel, helping maintain its softness.

Let me defend the good name of the corn syrup we use while making caramel we use with hand dipped chocolates. Lots of nutty health folks these days (and I’m not talking about nuts in caramel, I’m talking about nuts in the media) like to confuse the public when they criticize high fructose corn syrup. Corn syrup is not the same thing as high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup, which you can’t buy in the supermarket or even in the mini-mart, is completely different. High-fructose corn syrup is a commercial sweetener that is made by taking ordinary corn syrup and converting some of the glucose into fructose by adding enzymes. That conversion makes it almost twice as sweet as table sugar. That extra sweetness, along with the fact that it is cheap to produce, makes high-fructose corn syrup ideal for commercially produced foods like soda, candy, etc. So, why are the nutty folks against high-fructose corn syrup? I guess because it will make you fatter, faster.

There are two varieties of corn syrup, light and dark. Light of course is colorless and has a pure, sweet flavor. The dark corn syrup includes molasses which gives it a darker color and more of the caramel-like flavor. You can interchange them, but the flavors are a bit different, as is the appearance.

Culinary experts with a bit more experience than me, claim corn syrup enhances not just my caramel, but its use pays off with homemade ice cream, sugary syrups and even cakes. It does this because corn syrup is such an excellent smoothing agent. It prevents hard crystals from forming in the sugar, which has the tendency to recrystallize making your finished product grainy or gritty, and yes, that is redundant.

Before I get all scientific here, let me state for the record – sugar is sugar, and I’m a big fan. In fact, because of sugar, I am big. So, let’s get that out of the way. But while we talk about such sweet things, let’s talk sugar in general. There’s more to sugar than just the white stuff on the table and corn syrup in the cupboard. I mentioned glucose and fructose, but what about all the other ‘ose’ ending foods, like lactose, dextrose, and sucrose?

In an effort to confuse you and make smart people who think they know chemistry go crazy; let me explain what all these ‘ose’ sugars are. They’re disaccharides. I think that means ‘double sugars.’ In other words, they’re just different combinations of molecules that come from different plant and animal sources and they differ in the way the plant or animal creates and utilizes them and the way we extract and use them. They are the energy system for life. Wow, was that brilliantly said?” And then of course, if a disaccharide is a double sugar, then a monosaccharide is just a plain old lonely sugar. And yes, they are carbohydrates. (Now you can relax because I used a word you recognize)

Let’s briefly look at each of the common sugars.

SUCROSE

Sucrose, is table sugar, and it is the most common disaccharide that us non-dieting humans eat. It comprises the monosaccharides, glucose and fructose. When we digest disaccharides like sucrose, they break down into their simple sugars we use for energy.

MALTOSE

Maltose, also known as malt sugar, is formed from two glucose molecules. Malt is formed when grains soften and grow in water, and it is a component of beer, starchy foods like cereal, pasta, and potatoes, and many sweetened processed foods.

LACTOSE

Lactose, or milk sugar, is made up of galactose and glucose. The milk of mammals is high in lactose and provides nutrients for infants. I once read that most mammals can only digest lactose as infants, and when humans are able to digest dairy products in adulthood, it’s because they have a mutation that allows them to do so. I also read that this mutation became prevalent in our populations around 10,000 years ago. I need to get a t-shirt that says I’m a proud mutant.

TREHALOSE

Trehalose is also made up of two glucose molecules like maltose, but the molecules link differently. We find trehalose in certain plants like fungi, and in animals like shrimp and insects. They say the blood sugar of many insects, such as bees, grasshoppers, and butterflies, is made up of trehalose. Because of it breaks down efficiently, it provides rapid energy for flight.

LACTULOSE

Lactulose is formed from fructose and galactose. It mostly has medical uses. Some countries use it in food, but not in the United States, where it’s viewed as a pharmaceutical that might potentially harm diabetics.

CELLOBIOSE

Like maltose and trehalose, cellobiose is also made up of two glucose molecules, but they are linked even more differently. Since I don’t wish to learn more science that doesn’t result in the taste of my caramel. This is all the ‘ose’s we’ll discuss here.

From all of this ‘ose’ rambling, what we need to know is, we often use corn syrup in making our caramel because it’s a great sweetener and an outstanding agent in helping the other sugars behave themselves. Corn Syrup is not mandatory. We use a variety of recipes for caramel, and they don’t all call for corn syrup. But now you know why with some, we do. In a future article, we’ll cook two versions side by side and compare the final products.

The post Corn Syrup, The Sweetener For All Ages first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

Hello! Of course they are, that’s a silly question, even if no one actually ever asked it.

Let’s look at the facts. First: The more ingredients you add to any food, the odds that something nefarious sneaks in increases.

Homemade hand dipped chocolates have only five basic pure ingredients:

1. Cream

2. Butter

3. Sugar

4. Corn Syrup

5. Love

From here the various types of hand dipped chocolates may include nuts, vanilla or other flavor extracts, all innocent, I assure you. Except for the rum flavor. I’m not convinced rum is all so innocent. Too many people dive into a box of chocolates and hog up the rum flavored first, and then ask ‘Why’s the rum gone?’

As for the chocolate, (and we will dive into the differences between the various chocolate brands we use in future articles) we favor milk chocolate as our mainstay, in which there are six ingredients.

1. Sugar – as mentioned in an earlier article about the origins of chocolate, it’s the Europeans who added sugar to the pure chocolate of the original Mesoamericans, so it’s their fault we’re addicted.

2. Cocoa butter

3. Milk

4. Unsweetened chocolate

5. Soya lecithin

6. Pure vanilla

A word about the soya lecithin since that’s a fancy sounding ingredient. Soya lecithin is listed last as an ingredient because so little of it is used. Soya lecithin is an *emulsifier added to chocolate to lower its viscosity. This gives a more consistency to the chocolate, which becomes easier to temper and to mold. (A future article will focus on tempering chocolate. You may notice we talk about the future a lot. That’s because there’s no time like the present to put things off till the future.)

 So that’s about it for the ingredients in our hand dipped chocolates.

Compare that simplicity to commercial chocolates. According to packaging, an Almond Joy, which is similar to our popular coconut chocolate, features an ingredient list that reads like a scientific journal.

“Corn Syrup, Sugar, Coconut, Vegetable Oil (Palm Oil, Shea Oil, Sunflower Oil, Palm Kernel Oil, and/or Safflower Oil), Almonds, Chocolate, Skim Milk, Contains 2% or Less of Lactose (Milk), Cocoa, Whey (Milk), Salt, Lecithin (Soy), Milk Fat, PGPR, Cocoa Butter, Hydrolyzed Milk Protein, Sodium Metabisulfite (to Maintain Freshness), Vanillin (Artificial Flavor).

Notice how the cocoa butter, which is a real ingredient is toward the end of the list, that’s because not much is in it. In our hand dipped chocolates the cocoa butter is high on the list. Just sayin’

Now, in Russell Stover’s turtles, which are supposed to compare to our home made turtles which consist of pecans smothered in caramel and dipped in chocolate, we find another rocket scientist collection of ingredients:

‘CHOCOLATE CANDY {MALTITOL, CHOCOLATE, COCOA BUTTER, SODIUM CASEINATE (MILK), MILK FAT, SOY LECITHIN (AN EMULSIFIER), SUCRALOSE, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SALT), MALTITOL SYRUP, PECANS, POLYDEXTROSE, PALM KERNEL OIL, SODIUM CASEINATE (MILK), MALTITOL, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, SOY LECITHIN (AN EMULSIFIER), FD&C COLORS (YELLOW #5 & #6, RED #40, BLUE #1) AND SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVE).’

Do I need to go on? In an earlier post one of our focus group members claimed a reason our hand dipped chocolates are so special is because they are fresh. That it true, we never add mafia characters like Sodium Metabisulfite and Sodium Benzoate to maintain freshness. We don’t have to. Hand dipped chocolates never last long enough to go stale.

So if you ask if our hand dipped chocolates are healthier? Reports from many scientific journals claim that happy people who are loved, are healthier people, so we can comfortably say yes. After all, what’s a happy loved smile worth? *And I thank “The Chocolate Journalist”  in an article I found very informative for helping me appreciate how the emulsifiers work in chocolate. https://www.thechocolatejournalist.com/blog/soy-lecithin-chocolate

The post Are Your Hand Dipped Chocolates Healthier? first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

From an entire tray of hand dipped chocolates, my two favorites are the chocolate dipped caramels and the chocolate dipped turtles. I concede that turtles are made up of caramel and pecans – (I admit pecans are nuts.)

Why? Like any of our favorites, it’s the flavor & texture combination.

At the risk of offending our chocolate purists, who pride themselves in claiming the rich romantic Mesoamerican heritage of chocolate’s ancestry; caramel has an uncertain and questionable ancient past. Though caramel and caramel candies have been with us for centuries, their exact origins are a bit murky. We may question their family tree.

All my extensive research leads me a thousand years back to the Arabs. When I think about the Arabs, I don’t ponder the peace accords or middle east conflicts or even caramel. My mind reflects back to Ahab the Arab. Ahab however has nothing to do with caramel, so I’ll let you figure it out. Except maybe all the caramel historians got it wrong and they thought they were researching camels not caramels. But that’s your issue.*

Some say the Arabs first discovered caramel around 1000 A.D. Again, I don’t know who “some” really is, or is that are? But suffice to say, what we believe is there is evidence that around 1,000 A.D. the Arabs were crystallizing sugar to make what translators think the Arabs called a “kurat al milh” or “sweet ball of salt” or  “ball of sweet.” These first caramels aren’t like the caramel we enjoy today. That ball of sweet was a hard candy – rock hard – solid hard. That was due to the combination of sugar and water they were boiling over kettles.

Some say one form of this crystallized sugar and water mixture was used mainly in the beauty industry for waxing and sugaring—something I know nothing about. It was only later that the ‘ball of sweet’ became a confection.

Eventually, those tired of chipping their teeth, learned they could toss some milk and a little fat into the kettle and the results were a creamy texture with some stretchy consistency – basically more like our modern-day caramel.

Theory holds that somewhere in the mid 1600’s fat and milk became the more common tools to give caramel its chewiness.

Theory aside, we know that when milk solids and fats are heated with sugar and allowed to caramelize, we get some version of our current types of caramel. Note that we use the verb version (caramelize) of our noun (caramel) here. The Arabs probably didn’t know how to use verbs as nouns and so historians couldn’t accurately record the history of caramel and that’s why caramel’s origins are murky.

But in modern implementation of verbs and nouns, caramel remains a favorite treat because the nouns include sugar, milk, corn syrup and fat (butter). The verbs are ‘to heat’ and ‘to stir.’ Throw in an adverb; ’constantly’ and you have chocolate’s BFF.

Any wonder caramel has been so popular and remains a favorite sweet treat? It’s all about simple ingredients combined in just the right way. The results are delicious.

Jumping forward a few hundred years, caramel’s popularity increased greatly when Milton S. Hershey began his first successful candy business in 1886 called the Lancaster Caramel Company. Because you’re smart and you read what I said first, you quickly thought of the second candy company. But let’s stick with the first company Lancaster Caramel Company, which after it was established, was shipping caramel candies across the United States and to Europe.

Hershey’s introduction of caramel candies grew on a grand scale. Since then, caramel candy has taken on many forms and textures, such as sauces, creams, hard and soft candies, and glazes for foods such as popcorn.

Let’s get a little more granular. (Purposely a pun)

We’ve covered the fact that caramel is a combination of a few simple ingredients—sugar, water, fat, and milk. Now when combined in different orders, they will yield very different forms of caramel.

For instance, the traditional “dry method” of caramel making starts with boiling just your sugar, (yes, just melting the sugar dry) and adding the other three ingredients after. The other alternative “wet method” boils sugar and water together as one, and then adds the fat and milk later—this is what most caramel manufacturers do.

Depending on the method that you choose, your caramel will look and taste quite different—the dry method leads to a thicker, darker caramel that is used in hard candy, while the wet method results in the good stuff used for hand dipped chocolates.

Oh, and by the way, during the Lancaster Caramel Co.’s final years, Hershey shifted his focus toward chocolate and created the Hershey’s Chocolate Company as a subsidiary of Lancaster. Then in 1900, Hershey sold off the entire caramel business to The American Caramel Company for a sly $1 million thinking that it was just a fad and chocolate had more long-term potential. What’s he thinking now?

*

The post The History of Caramel first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

A dear friend with whom we’d shared a box of hand dipped chocolates asked how many boxes like the one he’d received did we produce and share with friends and family.

When I told him, he did a bit of math and said “that must cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars.” I confirmed that “yes in deed it did.” He paused and said, “and that doesn’t even begin to include all the time and energy.” I confirmed his assessment with a nod.

He then asked the question that led me to the theme of this post. “Why do you do it?”

Each year when we’re up to our elbows in chocolate, butter, cream and nuts, I ask that same question. I’ve long since given up trying to speed it up or cut corners to save on the time and energy part. My wife – the brains and talent behind our hand dipped chocolates tradition, claims “it’s a labor of love.”

Love trumps all the logic levied to streamline the efforts.

Reflecting on the countless complements, rave reviews, thank you’s, etc. this past year, I couldn’t help but ask, “why are hand dipped chocolates so much better received and appreciated than the many commercial chocolates?”

So I did. I went around asking what made our hand dipped chocolates so much better than other chocolates.

I got answers, like “They’re creamier,” “they’re smoother,” “the chocolate blends with the centers better,” “their mellow flavor is not so overpowering,” “their texture is more fine,” “they’re fresher.” Variation of answers like these came to a screeching halt when my 11 year old grandson, just as confident as any fine chocolate connoisseur could be, simply said, “It’s the love.”

That says it all. You can buy, and spend, and mix, and dip, but the magic, the secret, the unpatentable ingredient is love.

The post Why Hand Dipped Chocolates Are Better first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

Back sometime in the early 1960’s, which is after the Spanish conquered the new world and took the cacao bean back to Europe and ruined it by adding sugar and figuring out how to mold into bars to addict innocent children and lonely women; my mother learned how to turn her kitchen into a devilish addiction factory.

It was Myrtle Rappeley!* She is to blame. Just as the Spanish introduced xocolati to the unsuspecting royal courts in Europe, Myrtle introduced my mother and her best friend Mona Brown to the art of hand dipping chocolates. If I remember the details correctly as they played out some 60 years ago, (I don’t dare ask my siblings if this story is true because those older than me have lost their minds and those younger were too young to pay attention.) our local church congregation was participating in the building of a new chapel and everyone was expected to contribute a certain amount of money to the construction. The group of Relief Society women, as they are called, were asked to generate a portion of the assessment. As my mother was one of the leaders of this local group of women. It was suggested they make homemade hand-dipped chocolates and sell them to fund their portion of the new building’s construction.

When Myrtle suggested they make hand-dipped chocolates my mother responded saying, “I don’t know how to make hand-dipped chocolates.” Myrtle quickly said, “you will.” How prophetic she was.

The chocolates were not only wildly popular but the fund raising effort was wildly successful. The tradition of hand dipping chocolates began.

My mother’s sisters, all magicians in their own kitchens, went all-in as well. This art of hand dipping chocolates spread quickly through my mother’s family. To this day, the tradition lives on.

This past Christmas season, fourth and fifth generation grandchildren participated in the process of making hand-dipped chocolates, including my sons and daughter. I’m not talking about just the eating part of the process, my young grandchildren, nieces and grand nieces are quite proficient at hand dipping.  And of course we’ve all mastered the eating process as well.

Thank you Mom.

*Quote from Myrtle’s obituary – “She was especially famous for her hand-dipped chocolates, buttercream mints, and toffee.”

Obituary of Myrtle (Hess) Rappleye

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