Sluttishly (not so) Easy: Sea Salt Caramels

Sea salt caramel is probably my favourite type of fancy chocolate. I dare you to try and steal the last one from me. I don't care if you bought the chocolates! Mine! So, yesterday I thought I'd try and make my own. How hard could it be, right?

Well, put it this way, I don't think La Maison Du Chocolat have anything to worry about just yet. This recipe isn't perfect (or, I did it wrong, I'm not sure) but if you can get the caramel to set, you'll be laughing. My caramel didn't set properly unfortunately, but the end result was still very yummy indeed. The perfect amount of sea salt to sweet tangy caramel. Sure, there's caramel goo all over my kitchen (and in my hair) but the end result was worth it.

If you fancy trying your hand at these sweeties, you'll need these things:

• 315ml double cream
• 256g granulated sugar for the caramel
• 125ml light corn syrup (or, make a sugar syrup with 80ml water and 150g sugar - boil until it becomes syrup) - the syrup gives the caramel its smooth texture so it's worth making.
• 80ml honey
• 50g butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2tbsp sea salt, and sea salt to garnish

And you'll need to do these things:

• Foil a baking tray (I used a 36cm rectangle one, which had my caramel set would have been the perfect size).
• Bring the double cream to the boil and add the sugar, then stir in your syrup and honey. Keep stirring to make sure it's all mixed together.
• Continue stirring until it starts to thicken up - I think this was where I went wrong as I don't think I did this for long enough (I didn't want to it burn!) but I think it could have been thicker and that would have helped so when it starts to get thick, keep going.
• Remove from the heat and add the sea salt, the butter and vanilla essence.
• Pour into your baking tray and allow to set. Don't touch it - it's really really hot.
• It should set within a couple of hours - if it has, you can cut it into pieces.
• Melt the chocolate
• If the caramel hasn't set (I'm rather enjoying the slap-dash part of this recipe) you can make caramel balls with a teaspoon instead by scooping the mixture from the baking tray.
• Pop each piece of caramel straight into melted chocolate and lay onto another piece of foil. If you're working with unset caramel, make sure the bottom part of the chocolate is definitely covered.
• Sprinkly each piece with a few grains of sea salt.
• Pop in the fridge for half an our until the chocolate has set, and then eat and give yourself a sugar high.

OK, so these aren't the most perfect looking things in the world, but I promise you they're very very tasty. And I'll keep working on the caramel to try and get it to set. But for now, I'm just going to eat all of my sweeties.