How to make caramels

ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

2 teaspoons fleur de sel

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup light corn syrup

1/4 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla

parchment paper

wax paper

expensive candy thermometer

prep:

Line bottom and sides of 9x4 baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment. Bring cream, butter and fleur de sel to a boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.

Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in a heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.

Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up) an simmer, add vanilla, stirring frequently, until caramel registers 245 F on thermometer, 10-15 minutes. Pour into baking pan and cool 2 hours.

Timing is everything. The sugar mixture may stay at 230 for a long time before suddenly shooting up to 240°F. As long as you don't let it go beyond 245°F which can happen in the blink of an eye you're good to go. As soon as you see 245°F, wait 5 seconds and then pour. Otherwise you'll end up with toffee... and although toffee is good, if you set out to make caramels and you accidently get toffee you have basically FAILED.

Cutting these is my least favorite part. I actually purchased a pizza wheel to try and cut these into strips. Then I use a small hatchet to cut into smaller pieces and then wrap in wax paper. The pizza wheel is only marginally better than trying to cut a straight line with a kitchen knife.

We are *definately* girls

Friday night we went to the Three Apples exhibit celebrating 35 years of Hello Kitty. Despite the fact that its been eternity since we've all used a glittery translucent Sanrio pencil box, the pop-up store turned us into obssessive and excitable second graders again. The amount of joy a $1.75 Hello Kitty stamp ring can still provide is hilarious.

"From now on my signature is invalid without this stamp"

--Noelle

Damien Hirst

{supremenewyork.com}

Hang all three and its the closest any commoner can get to feeling like they own the actual thing. Almost.

001

Die

I hate limited edition bullshit. Don't ever tell me anything is sold out. I'll kill you.

Fine art

Sometimes all I want to do is retreat to some hippie mountains and throw some pottery all day.. and fire it in some crazy underground kiln I made. It always fluctuates between that scenario and the one where I'm a TA at the printmaking studio and I just file down zinc plates all day and make perfect aquatints.

The colors you use to ink plates are the consistency of lipstick and you mix it on a glass table top with a spatula that is almost as stiff as a razor blade. Its really satisfying to scrape around cause of the blade on glass feeling. You can almost do it all day in a trance-like state.

Also there are some crazy firing techniques in ceramics where the glaze actually has glass shards in it and when you fire your piece in the kiln the glass pieces explode and melt, creating a gradient glazing effect.

Basically I hate work right now if you can't tell.

K-Stars