- No, I told them your candy was absolutely indescribable.
- Hey Chandler, do we know that lady?
- Maybe, isn't she the woman who lives below you
and have sex really loud.
- Oh, right. I'll do it just this once,
but you can't tell anybody.
- Yes yes, please just give it to me.
- Yeah that's her. - Yeah that's her.
(audience laughing)
- Hey, what's up guys.
Welcome back to Binging with Babish,
with this week I forgot to record my sort
of walk-on introduction things,
so we're gonna recycle this one from last week's episode,
let's take a look at these oxtails.
Perfect, and now we can start making Monica's candy
from friends, which I always imagined
as a chewy caramel covered in chocolate.
So in a medium saucepan,
we are combining 60 grams of water,
155 grams of light corn syrup
and 400 grams of granulated sugar,
which we're gonna place over medium high heat,
stirring minimally with every intention
of bringing up to 320 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once 320 is reached we're to kill the heat
and start to streaming in a mixture of butter and cream,
230 grams of butter melted into 230 grams of cream,
adding a little bit at a time whisking constantly
and then once everything's added,
we're gonna return the caramel over medium high heat
and cook until we get it back up
to 240 to 245 degrees Fahrenheit.
The softball stage, 240 if you wanna a softer caramel,
245 if you wanna chew your caramel,
then we're adding just a little dash of vanilla extract
and a whole lot of dashes of kosher salt.
I mean, salted caramel, you ever heard of it?
Whisk to combine, and then we're pouring it
into a prepared baking dish of some kind,
I've got a square one here that has both
been liberally greased with nonstick spray
and lined with parchment paper.
Once poured, it must be cooled completely,
I'm talking at least six hours,
only then can we even consider turning out
and cutting into our desired shapes,
amending both sides of a sheet of parchment paper
with nonstick spray set in the rimmed baking sheet
to receive such shapes,
and I had just enough foresight to use this 10
that has a removable bottom for easy extraction.
We're going to invert our black oak caramels
onto a greasy surface,
remove the plates and parchment paper,
and then we can begin scoring and cutting,
a supposedly precise process that I did pretty imprecisely
after greasing up my knife,
I carefully measured in scored perfectly square caramels,
but once I got down to actually cutting them,
I just kind of eyeballed it.
This is homemade candy after all,
it should look kinda homemade, right?
So once everybody has been cut into cubes,
it's time to coat them in chocolate,
which means we must tangle with the archnemesis
of all great British baking show contestants,
tempering the act of melting
and then recrystallizing chocolate
so that it holds the shape at room temperature.
We'll start by chopping up a whole mess of dark chocolate,
which we gonna place in a large glass bowl,
which we're then gonna place over a pot
of not quite simmering water.
The objective here is to simply melt
the chocolate completely,
start constantly, make sure that your water does not boil
and bring it up to a temperature
of about 110 to 220 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then we're gonna take it off the heat and seed it,
that is we're gonna add a lesser amount
of very finely chopped unmelted chocolate.
This is both gonna cool down our melted chocolate
and encourage it to recrystallize,
effectively what we're doing is melting the chocolate
and then adding some unmelted chocolate
to try and help it remember where it came from
and then stirring it vigorously
and constantly in exhaustively,
until it hits 86 degrees Fahrenheit,
this might take like 45 minutes,
so the way to cool off your chocolate more quickly
is to transfer it to a stainless steel bowl.
This doesn't retain as much heat as glass
and it's gonna cool things off more quickly.
If even after all this, your chocolate is still hot,
you can add more seed chocolate,
which is both gonna cool it further
and encouraged crystallization.
But if that seed chocolate doesn't melt,
you might need to return things
to the heat for just a few seconds.
And I really mean just a few seconds,
just enough to melt the seed chocolate.
At this point you don't want things
to go above 94 degrees Fahrenheit,
otherwise you're starting from scratch.
Now to show you how important temperatures
are in this process,
I'm going to show you something of a demonstration,
as you can see I've got my chocolate down
to about 91 degrees Fahrenheit,
so I'm going to perform a temperature test,
dipping a thin spatula in the chocolate
and letting it set for two minutes.
And as you shall see in the impending closeup,
it's pretty set but it's dull,
but this whole time I've been agitating
and cooling the chocolate,
so when I dip the tester in once more,
letting it set for another two minutes,
you'll see the difference that temperature can make.
The chocolate is shiny and pretty
and ready to coat our caramels,
which we're going to painstakingly
dip into the chocolate one at a time.
The easiest option is to use a pair of forks,
because that's gonna allow excess to drip away.
Just make sure each caramel,
is thoroughly coated in chocolate
and place it on a prepared parchment paper set
in a rimmed baking sheet,
trying to shake off as much excess chocolate as possible,
so you don't have a foot on the bottom of your candies.
Then while these guys are still wet,
we've gotta finish them off with a little bit of flaky salt.
I'm pretty sure not salting your caramel
is a class three misdemeanor in most States,
it was after the 20th caramel or so that I wised up,
and started to use some fondue forks,
world renowned for being able to contend
with molten chocolate.
Now we're just gonna rinse
and repeat with the remaining caramels,
heating the chocolate as necessary
but never bringing it over 94 degrees Fahrenheit,
until we have ourselves a completed flatter
of perfect chocolate covered caramels.
As you can see,
the chocolate shell is set at room temperature,
it's nice and shiny,
and it looks like a thing that you might buy at a store,
but how do they taste?
I wouldn't say that they're indescribable
but they definitely tastes like little drops of heaven.
They're soft and chewy and stretchy and sweet and salty,
and just about everything I'd hope they'd be.
I would advise against sharing these
unless you want unruly neighbors.
(upbeat music)