Three of a Thing: Salted Caramel

[W]hen sugar, salt and fat are ramped up in combination with another, the foodstuff in question has an effect on the human brain rather like drugs. In a heady combination, they stimulate neurons, which release dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the pleasure centre, which in turn makes us want to eat more. There is an explosiveness to this combination that does get the pulse racing and the adrenaline flowing. Part of this is down to the immoderate intensity of the flavours: the combination is somehow so surprising, and yet so compelling.

Nigella Lawson, English  food critic

Salted caramel is presently the toast of popular tastemakers. Although there are few local sources of actual salted caramels, almost every food brand or store worth its salt (see what I did there?) is offering a salted caramel something or another. The appeal is not difficult to understand. As Nigella Lawson points out, the salted caramel is the trifecta of sugar, salt, and fat of which manic episodes are made.

Here, I am reviewing three salted caramel products. One of these does contain an actual salted caramel. Two of these live up to the promise of the trifecta of tastes. All three of these are consumer products. These three are:

Clockwise: (1) Dark chocolate-covered salted caramel from Candy Corner, (2) Salted caramel gelato with candied pecans from Bigoli, (3) Starbucks salted caramel hot cocoa

Dark chocolate covered salted caramel from Candy Corner
Short version: dark chocolate, good. Caramel, good, Sea salt, not the sexy flaky kind but good enough. 

TL;DR version  That Candy Corner is carrying loads more dark chocolate-covered goodies is excellent news. Lately I've found myself loading up on goodies for a movie, knotting up the leftovers and carrying them in my purse in case of dementor attack because in this function, these babies truly deliver. In the throes of sudden hopelessness, a bite into one of these delivers a punch of bittersweet and then a burst of salty that smears the tongue, inner cheeks and palate with velvet. In ennui, letting one melt in your mouth gives the successive caresses of the bittersweet then the smoky buttersweet followed by a momentary salty flick, one that tells you to get on your feet and be gone from this abject place. If you are at any risk of exposure to the sort of misery that sticks to your clothes and clogs your pores, do keep these in your person at all times.

My one complaint with Candy Corner is that they do on occasion give a homogeneous bag. In last the 200-gram bag of supposedly all dark chocolate covered salted caramels I got, there were a few stray pieces of almond, espresso bean, raisin, and strawberry—all also covered in dark chocolate and all stuff that I might also order but I had wanted a bag of salted caramels, not some motley collection of pirates' pieces of eight. Perhaps a bit more care to prevent such inadvertent mixing?

Salted caramel gelato with candied pecans from Ristorante Bigoli
Salted caramel in ice cream form is no longer the novel treat it used to be. For the most part, however, companies just dress up their vanilla ice cream with ribbons of caramel sauce and throw in a few spare bath salt crystals. (No, Nestle and McDonald's! I'm not gonna name names!) Not so with Ristorante Bigoli. The ice cream base is sweet and smoky and luscious, somewhere between a spectacularly buttery caramelo and a dulce de leche. Even the mouthfeel is gorgeous. No sharp icicles here. Only the occasional surprise of flaky salt. 

By itself, the gelato was very good but adding the candied pecans made it memorable. With the pecans, it was no longer just a premium version of a popular ice cream flavor. It was suddenly a dessert to hang a memory on, the way one would hang a memory on pie one had at Grandma's.

Salted caramel chocolate drink from Starbucks
Starbucks first offered their salted caramel hot chocolates for the fall season years ago. Now that they are placing their products in every grocery, they are also hawking a hot cocoa mix that promises to replicate that experience in the relative safety of one's home and at any season. All you need to add is 8 oz of hot milk per packet.

I followed their instructions for the hot chocolate to the letter and, well, it's fine. Chocolatey, sweet, milky. Close enough to the Signature Hot Chocolate you can get at their store, I guess. But then again, I was never a fan. 

The box clearly promises caramel and sea salt and I suppose if you wish hard enough you could conjure a smokiness at the tip of your tongue. The milk fat (because you did not cheat the recipe by using skim!) might even recall the richness of butter in a real salted caramel. Or you could just admit it's more marshmallow than caramel. There is the slightest hint of salt at the end of each swallow, just noticeable if you were looking for it.

What is perfectly noticeable, however, are the hard white bits of opaque sugar that sink to the bottom of the cup and are resistant to solution with 75˚C water. They yielded only after I dragged them up the sides of the mug and crushed them with the back of a coffeespoon. 

The box also has instructions for a caffe mocha. The barely-there caramel taste is nearly lost in the coffee—I used dark-roasted arábica from Figaro, a local coffee chain, prepared in a Bialetti. Still pretty good but I probably could have gotten similar results with just a regular hot cocoa mix, like the dark chocolate one from Swiss Miss. 

Allow me to say again that is not a bad product. In fact, it is a pretty good hot chocolate. It just doesn't deliver on being a salted caramel.


For sure there are salted caramel products out there. Some will be better than these three, some will be worse. Any recommendations?