Baking Bouchon - Recipe 49: Lemon Caramels

The name of these is very deceiving - they're actually not caramels at all.  They look like caramels and have the texture of caramels but they're really lemon and caramel flavored chocolate.

Have we talked about Carmelia chocolate before?  We probably have but it's worth repeating that this is probably the best tasting chocolate I've ever had.  It's caramel flavored and so ridiculously creamy.  I have to hide it from myself to stop from eating it.... I kind of succeeded this time.

To make these "caramels" you combine melted carmelia and white chocolate together with cocoa butter (which is totally disgusting, by the way -- when it's melted it's like oil but way grosser).   All of that gets put into the food processor.  Then you cook sugar, butter and lemon juice together and stream that into the chocolate mixture while the food processor is running.

And then it leaks out all over the counter... because it's liquid and it manages to get under the blade in the food processor and run out from underneath the bowl.  It's great.

After that you briefly spin in some lemon zest to pump up the lemon flavor.











The recipe wants you to use confectionary rulers to shape the caramels... or a 6 inch square baking pan... neither of which I have.  I put mine in a loaf pan and it worked just fine.

It took a long time for these to set up and once they did there was a weird film on them.  I've deduced that it's the cocoa butter because it's the grossest thing in these caramels.

However, once I scraped off the film, the caramels were super pretty and shiny.  They were nice and firm (unless the first set of caramels I made) and held their shape nicely after I cut them into squares. 

I liked these - the caramel/lemon flavor combination is really unique.  CA was not a fan.  He said they were weird.  He took them to work and also got mixed feedback... good and weird.

Will I make them again?  Probably not.


Enjoy!
Julie