Dark Chocolate Coconut Milk Caramels

I am in charge of buying candy when holidays come around, this is a nice perk for my husband, Steve, he is able to worry less about buying something that it turns out I cannot have.  This happened a few years ago, he bought what was a loving and thoughtful gift of candy, only to find out it made me ill, not all dark chocolates are dairy free. 

This recipe is what happens when your favorite caramels are $60 per 36 pieces, which isn't a horrible price, we have purchased these at least 4 times, they are really good. I just know that if I take the time, about 4 hours, I can make triple the amount for around $10. These freeze well, feel free to hide them in your freezer. If I can keep my paws off them, I have candy for holidays for the rest of the year.

Ingredients:

• 27.32oz of full fat coconut milk, two 13.66oz cans
• 2 1/4 cups of granulated sugar
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla 
• 8 - 10 oz dark chocolate, 85% cacao 
• Sea Salt

Directions:

1. Place a large sheet of parchment paper a 9x13 cake pan.
2. In a wide and tall pot attach candy thermometer, hovering off the bottom of the pan, my thermometer has a metal piece the keeps the thermometer off the bottom, super handy. I used a stock pot and it was more than big enough for this, if your pot is too small during cooking, turn off heat, use a larger pot, carefully moving contents to their new home.
3. Add coconut milk, sugar, maple syrup, water, and salt to pan.  Turn heat to medium high. With a long handled wooden spoon, stir mixture gently, combining ingredients.  The coconut milk fat will look like floating icebergs, once they melt it will look like watered down hot chocolate.
4. Stir occasionally to ensure the mixture is not burning to the bottom of the pan, boil until temperature reaches 240°F.  My batch took 25 minutes to get to 220°F, and another 5 minutes to get to 240°F.  During this time it changed from watery to thicker and more of a caramel color, this is when I feared burning candy on the bottom of the pan the most. You may even get small whiffs of burning caramel smell, I did, I was worried I had ruined my batch - not so - everything turned out fine.
5. Wait a few seconds, maybe 20 - 30 after 240°F before removing from heat, just don't let the mixture get too much hotter, try to stay under 245°F. I like a chewy caramel this kept these chewy and not super soft. I gave a good quick stir then turned off heat. 
6. Add vanilla, stirring to combine.  It will sizzle and smell wonderful.
7. Using a silicone spatula, quickly and carefully pour contents of pan into parchment lined cake pan. The caramels set rather quickly, if you take too long to scrape the pan out the caramels may have a discolored look and won't be uniform, I left the bulk of the pan scraping as bonus candies, I'll come back to that.
8. With the caramels in the cake pan cooling, gently level the pan out by slowly helping the caramels settle.  Set to cool somewhere on a kitchen towel - I left to cool on my counter but wanted to protect my counter from the residual heat. 
9. Let cool for at least 3 hours, pick up caramels using the parchment paper.  With a kitchen knife or shears cut caramels to size, I used both methods.  The blades will get coated with sugar and will dull, be ready to clean and dry blades.
10. In a ramekin, small Corning Wear baker or Pyrex glass bowl, add half of the chocolate bars.  Heat in microwave in 30 second intervals until melted, about 3 minutes.
11. Lay wax paper on a baking sheet that will fit in your fridge.
12. Using a fork drop one caramel at a time into the chocolate, flip to coat. While coated caramel is on fork, tap the inside of the chocolate bowl to gently ease off extra chocolate coating.  Then slide chocolate covered caramel on to wax paper to cool. 
13. Before chocolate sets add dusting of sea salt.  I would coat 3 - 5 pieces with chocolate then sea salt that small group.
14. Heat more chocolate as needed.
15. When the baking sheet is full, move to fridge to speed up chocolate setting. Lay out another sheet of waxed paper to continue chocolate coating; I needed two for this recipe.
16. Once chocolate coating is set, about 10 minutes in fridge, gently remove from waxed paper and store in container of choice.
17. I wrapped two groups of candies in freezer paper to keep in freezer for another time.  Chocolates have a 10 - 12 month freezer self life, just let them warm up at room temperature for a few hours before digging in.  
    

    

    It takes a long time to boil down - 30 minutes of gently stirring until I got to 240°F

    

    Salted and chewy caramels

    
    

    

    Happy Valentines Day!

Recipe adapted from: Every day vegan cooking