Making caramel is challenging. If you have ever tried, you know exactly what I mean. Getting sugar to the right temperature without burning it, and without it crystallizing in an unpleasant or unwanted way, takes patience, time, and a soupçon of luck.
Most caramel recipes require table sugar or sucrose, butter, and some kind of milk, often heavy cream or condensed milk. The actual chemistry of caramelization is poorly understood as there are many reactions occurring at once. However, as one heats any sugar, the molecules undergo a reaction with oxygen and each other to form long brown colored molecules called caramelans, caramelens, and caramelins, as well as the flavor molecules maltol (toasty), diacetyl (buttery), furan (nutty), and ethyl acetate (fruity). When dairy is added, amino acids are added, so the Maillard reaction of amino acids and sugars occurs, upping the number of flavor molecules produced which allows the caramel to be more flavorsome at a lower temperature. This is useful because it prevents unpleasant flavour molecules formed at higher temperatures.
To make a soft caramel candy that has both chew and a melt in the mouth texture, you need to keep the heat even, the temperature constant, and only stir the mixture a minimum amount. This is to cause the lowest amount of sucrose crystallization, but still encourage the right amount of linkage between the long caramelan/en/in chains.
Armed with an ancient, highly dinked, aluminium pot she found for $5 in a thrift store, Brooke Cooley of Bespoke Caramels has certainly mastered the art of caramel making. She initially had dreams of becoming a whizz in the kitchen, but was disappointed when the pot didn’t magically make her into Ina Garten! Instead, she found an old English caramel recipe and used her pot to make the perfect caramels, sharing them with friends and family.
In 2020, Cooley was forced to take medical leave from her teaching job. She increased her production of caramels to fill the void. She realized that she could make her caramels for everyone, not just people she knew, and send hand-made cards of love and kindness out into the world – and Bespoke Caramels was born. In each bag of Bespoke Caramels, there is a bonus caramel tied to a handmade kindness card to share with someone who needs a smile.
Scaling up something like a handmade caramel business is always hard, but Cooley has found it almost impossible, largely due to her pot!
“When we started upping production, my husband and mom took on the monumental task of finding another vintage caramel pot…eBay, tag sales, Etsy. And, believe it or not, none of the newly acquired pots worked. My caramels were slightly off,” Cooley says. When she looked at having an outside kitchen help make her caramels during busy times, they absolutely did not come up to her pot’s exacting standard. So, she works day and night during high demand times to
make her perfect caramels because, as she says, “It’s so much fun seeing ‘first taste’ faces; it never gets old!” •
