4 Cool Science Tricks!

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Artist Jan Vormann uses Lego bricks to repair and fill holes in broken walls.

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DIY Maple Caramel Sauce from thebibliosphere on Tumblr

Source: thebibliosphere 

Time to make some maple caramel sauce to give to the fam for the holidays. Hopefully this pot is big enough to accommodate the lava bomf about to occur because I can’t be fucked washing two pots.

We’re less than ten minutes in and it’s already doubled. I think I may have made a mistake.

Panic, a visual study in three parts.

For reference, this is a 6 quart pot filled with molten sugar. And now I need to add butter to it. Fucking pray for me.

I lived, bitch!

By the magic of time lapses and a lot of flailing, we have salted maple caramel sauce. I did not attempt to record the chaos that occurred when I added the butter, but let’s just say I absolutely 100% needed a bigger pot for the portion size I made. I did not however melt the pot to the stove. This time. 

Anyway, assuming you want to do this safely, here’s how you make a sane sized batch of maple caramel sauce.

Ingredients:

2 cups maple syrup (needs to be the real kind, will not work if it has corn syrup in it)

4 table spoons of butter

½ cup milk (if you want it to be really luxurious, use ½ cup heavy cream. I just used milk because that’s what I had and fuck going to the grocery store)

pinch of salt

Things you will need:

A medium to large sized saucepan with a heavy bottom. Pots with a lot of height are preferable, as this mother fucker likes to climb. 

A wooden spoon or silicone, heat resistant spatula. Do not use plastic or nylon, they may  will melt.

A candy thermometer.

Something to store it in.

Better self preservation skills than I have.

Method:

Imagine you are a maple tree

Take your maple syrup and put it over a medium heat. Do not start out on a high heat or you’ll burn the sucker. Gradually bring it to a boil until it is between the temperature of 225F - 230F.

Unlike my maple candy recipe, you do not want to go above 230F, because it will start to harden and you don’t want that. You also don’t want to stir as much, cause stirring causes crystallization and we want this sauce to be smooth.

Once it’s reached the desired temp, remove it from the heat and carefully add your butter. It may fizzle and seize, but that’s okay, just keep stirring until it’s melted in. 

Add your milk/cream and stir in until blended.

Add a pinch of salt. Stir.

Pour into a heat proof jar, preferably using a ladle because handling hot sugar is dangerous (omg please be careful, don’t hurt yourselves), and allow to cool before refrigerating.

Don’t worry if it looks really thin, it’ll thicken up as it cools. Like so:

If it doesn’t thicken up, you needed to heat it longer. If it’s grainy, you over stirred it. If it’s melted to your stove you over heated it and possibly needed a bigger pan. Practice makes it easier, but generally speaking I find newbies to caramel actually find this easier than sugar cane caramel, largely because there’s no eyeballing involved.

If stored properly in the refrigerator this should last two weeks. Like most home made caramel sauces. If you freeze it in a freezer safe jar, it should last up to 2-3 months.

Enjoy.

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