"caramel" news and stories

Have you ever forgotten about a birthday, or tried to whip up a birthday cake at the last minute? It can be daunting -- especially if you're a from-scratch baker who refuses to indulge in boxed cake mix and tins of frosting. However, if you like bananas, I have just the thing -- Banana Cake, which I found over at Honey and Jam, and came from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. After a few adjustments -- one bundt pan rather than two pans (needs more time to cook), and no "carmel" bananas in the middle or on top -- the result was an incredibly moist and delicious banana cake with a crisp exterior.

Since my whipping cream had mysteriously gone bad a few weeks early, I hunted for a caramel sauce I could pour on top, and settled on this recipe over at Metro. (It's a good thing I didn't notice what site I was on until now, since I've been a bit irked with the store's quality since Dominion became Metro and the selection went down the tubes.) Anyway... It's not the best sauce recipe out there -- but it's a tasty one.

According to the recipe, you're supposed to end up with this mixture that needs to be pulverized in a blender to get smooth. Mine was smooth from the get-go, and actually a bit too watery, so I had to wait about 40 minutes for it to thicken. But the result was perfect for this cake -- a nice sugary rush to balance the intense and tasty banana. Oh, perfect once the rum was added, to give it a little something extra. (Actual rum, rather than extract.)

If you like bananas, banana bread, what have you, give it a try. Your taste buds will thank you.

One of the best gastronomic experiences is the gooey rich creaminess of caramel slowly melting on one's palate. Over the past few years, we have seen an increasing number of products, such as Poco Dolce's burnt caramel toffee, adding salt into the caramel equation. A recent New York Times article explains how this extraordinarily sweet and savory combo went from elite chichi Parisian pastry shops to the American mass-market (stores such as Wal-Mart) and the soon-to-be Obama White House.

The article suggests that the financial success of this exquisite pair is due to a fortunate profitable trend cycle. Parisian pastry chefs initiated American chefs' obsession with the caramel-sea salt blend. Then, it ended up in specialty food magazines and food shows. Soon enough, chain restaurants, like the Cheesecake Factory, began selling them. Finally, Wal-Mart picked up on the trend. Of course, it would not have caught on so quickly if it were not for Americans' long-established taste for salty mixed with sweet, a flavor picked up gracias to dulce de luche from South America and Mexico.

As fellow blog Salt News states, the NY Times focuses on the financial and cultural success of the caramel-salt mix without ever delving into the gastronomic sensations it elicits. The title of the article, "How Caramel Developed a Taste for Salt," is misleading since there is never any substantial information explaining how this caramel concoction developed in small villages in the region of Brittany in France. I'm left wondering whether or not caramel indeed activates a desire for salt. Instead, the article gets carried away with Obama's love for salty caramel delights as though it would be hard to imagine. Could you blame him?

I'm a big fan of recipes that combine at least four or more ingredients that they are decadent enough to begin with, but combined, create this magical, sugar coma-inducing masterpiece, much like the one you see above. They're the kind of treats that are so sugary, so powerful, that you widen your eyes and suck in your cheeks in shock at the first bite. That shocks soon wears off into utter delight, and you're lost in a sugary heaven.

Whew. And then I wake up.

Seriously, though these Carmelita bars from Eddybles look amazing. The pretty toasty white parts atop the treat are the streusel topping. And the only slightly daunting part looks to be unwrapping 48 of those little caramel cubes (and making sure you don't burn them on top of the stove). If you really wanted to be bad, you could substitute the suggested bittersweet or semisweet chips for milk chocolate, to achieve that cheek-sucking reaction I described above.

No. that isn't a typo in the title. Yesterday was March 14th, which, in abbreviated form, is 3.14 (feel free to add the 1592653589793238... if you so desire), better known to us non-mathematicians simply as Pi.

As is usually the tradition here at Slashfood, we are willing to turn just about any circumstance into something to celebrate, so why should Pi Day be any exception? Fortunately for us, the blogosphere was full of others who jumped on this bandwagon as well. In fact, Kitchen Parade collected submissions all week, resulting in dozens of mouth-watering pie recipes all linked up on one page.

So without further ado, following are my top eight favorites, which I will be putting on my "need to make" list. (Corresponding photos can be found in the gallery at the bottom of the page after the jump.)

I am constantly in awe of my friend Jennie's (she of Straight from the Farm fame) level of food creativity. She is constantly coming up with delicious new recipes, doing things like making cheese (people keep telling me that cheesemaking is easy, but I've yet to give a whirl) and making cranberries dance and sing (well, not literally). But I do believe that she has outdone herself this time with these jars of homemade dulce de leche. It actually appears to be pretty easy to make and if you're looking for a last-minute homemade holiday gift, this might be your answer.

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