Every year around christmas time I crave for truffles – who doesn’t?? And as my cooking skills have developed a lot within the last one-two years, I decided to advance from simple chocolate truffles to something a bit more advanced (of cause I will still be making chocolate truffle).
Looking for some cooking tools at Williams-Sonoma’s home page I stumbled upon this sea salt caramel truffle recipe and rushed to the nearest super market to by sea salt 🙂

I’ve made caramels many times before and find it relatively easy as long as I have the appropriate tool (a candy thermometer!!!), but it is quite time consuming so if you consider to try it – what a silly question, I know that you consider trying it 😉 – do it on a day where you have other duties to do at home, so that you can combine things (make the caramel mixture, do the laundry, roll the caramels, prepare dinner, cover caramels with chocolate, serve dinner, eat caramels with evening coffee 🙂 ).

I had a cookie jar with christmas cookies (vanilla wreath cookies, gingerbread cookies and Jewish cookies) and these lovely truffles with me to the office this morning, and OMG i was popular 🙂

Ingredients (70 caramels)

1 cup sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

1 stick butter

1 cup heavy cream

2 tbsp. sea salt, for sprinkling

10 oz. dark quality chocolate (70%), I prefer Amedei Toscano Black

In a heavy saucepan over medium-low heat, combine the sugar, corn syrup, butter and 1/2 cup of the cream. Bring to a simmer, stirring constantly, and then cook, stirring, until a candy thermometer registers 240°F, about 10-15 minutes. Remove from the heat and drizzle in the remaining 1/2 cup cream, stirring to mix well. The mixture will bubble up slightly.

Return the pan to the heat and continue to cook until the thermometer registers 244°F, about 10 minutes more. Remove from the heat and pour the mixture into a prepared pan.

Let stand for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The mixture should be firm to the touch but not hard. Using a teaspoon, scoop out and form balls of caramel and place them on a sheet of baking paper. If you want the caramels to be exactly the same size, you can weight the caramels – to get 70 caramels, they should weight 0.35 oz each. The caramel scraps can be gathered and shaped into balls by hand. Sprinkle each ball with a few grains of sea salt. Let stand for 1 hour before dipping.

Chop the chocolate roughly and melt 2/3 in a heat proof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Pour the melted chocolate over the remaining chocolate and wait for 30 seconds before you begin to stir.
Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper.