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Friday, September 12, 2008

Caramel Candy Sundaes



I must truly be the most fortunate gal on the planet. Last night, when I walked through the front door so glad to be home after being awake for more hours than I would have thought humanly possible, and just thankful that one of my patients had not gone into cardiac arrest that morning when he was having stabbing chest pains and his blood pressure was bottoming out, that it took a moment for the wonderful aromas floating from the kitchen to register in my brain. Not only had Zach cooked a beautiful supper... but he had even made homemade caramel candy for dessert...







Caramel Candy Sundaes


6 oz sugar
1 T milk or soymilk
Ice cream or vegan ice dream
Whipped cream or vegan whipped "cream"

~ Pour the sugar into a small skillet set over medium heat, and let the sugar sit patiently in the pan for 5 minutes. This will be very hard to do, because (at least if you are me), you will want to know what on earth is going on underneath the pile of ordinary looking sugar...
~ After 5 minutes, you can give the skillet a good shake, and you will finally be able to see that the sugar is starting to melt.
~ Once a quarter of the sugar has melted (this will take about 3 more minutes), you can begin briskly stirring the sugar until all the sugar has melted and a total cooking time of 10 minutes has been reached.
~ Remove the pan from the heat, and pour in the milk or soymilk while stirring very briskly - the cold liquid will make the caramel want to clump unless you are stirring vigerously.
~ Now here comes the part that you'll want to do differently than we initially did. Scoop the ice cream into individual dishes, and then spoon the hot caramel by small quantities (around 1/2 tsp at a time) on top of the ice cream. Each drop of caramel will instantly cool and form into a small, hard caramel candy. Avoid pouring a large quantity onto the ice cream in a big lava of caramel (which is what we did because we thought it would be pretty) - you'll wind up with a huge, oddly shaped caramel lollipop that doesn't integrate into the ice cream well.
~ By the time you finish spooning the dollops of caramel onto the ice cream, your ice cream will have begun to melt a bit. Gently fold the caramel candies into the ice cream to distribute them throughout, then return the dishes of ice cream to the freezer until the ice cream has firmed up again.
~ When the dishes are ready to serve, top them with whipped cream!


8 comments:

  1. Zach is definitely a keeper!!! :0)

    Those sundaes look like the perfect way to end a meal - wowza!

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  2. Wow--they look amazing (and amazingly decadent!). That is some guy!!

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  3. Well done, Zach! That dessert looks like a real treat.

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  4. Hello Astra. Thanks for visiting my blog. OMG, I read your entire profile. Where in the world do you get the time to do it all? Are you wonder woman? Talk about multi tasking. You are amazing. Isn't it wonderful when every once in a while some else does the cooking? Don't work so hard. Relax and put your feet up and have some more caramel!

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  5. VeggieGirl, I think so too... ;-)

    Ricki, you're right, they were pretty decadent... :-) But we did use low-fat ice cream - does that count? ;-)

    CookieMouse, Thank you! It was a wonderful surprise treat indeed! :-)

    Teresa, thank you so much for your incredibly kind words! I am honored and humbled!

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  6. You are a lucky woman. I'd love to walk in the door to that. I've never made caramel with anything but naughty full fat cream, so I've got to try it your way with milk now.

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  7. Wow, you are a lucky girl indeed. Looks delicious!

    Btw, I love what you've written in your profile and agree completely. No reason we can't nourish ourselves and enjoy every delicious minute of it. Good for you!

    I'm looking forward to trying some of your dishes, especially that artichoke dip.

    Thanks for the comment on my blog too. I appreciate it!

    Cheers!

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  8. Sure, you can be the Bok Choy Queen... but wouldn't ya rather be the Caramel Sundae Queen? Yum, that looks so good!

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