Lavender Sea Salt Caramels

Lavender can sometimes have butterscotch-ish facets in perfumes and for a long while now I've been thinking about how great it would be to make my own lavender flavored caramel. This weekend I finally made it and I thought I'd share the recipe here on the blog.

Lavender Sea Salt Caramels

3 dl (1,5 cup) sugar
3 dl (1,5 cup) whipping cream
1 dl (0,5 cup) light corn syrup
1/4 vanilla pod (optional, but feel free to use more as well)
5-10 drops of lavender essence (I use Mandy Aftels Lavender Chefs Essence)
2 big pinches of sea salt
1 tablespoon oil

Prepare by putting a sheet of oven paper on a baking sheet.

Throw together sugar, cream, syrup, scraped seeds from inside the vanilla pod, 5 drops of lavender essence and one pinch of salt in a pot.

At the start the caramel batter will be light tan. Boil vigorously until the color start changing toward deep amber. Stir all the time with a wooden spoon. This takes more or less 20 minutes.

Test if the caramel is ready by letting a small drop of batter drip into a glass of cold water. If the drop shapes itself into a hard roundish ball, the caramel is ready.

When you see that the caramel about to be done, taste it. Be careful, it's VERY hot. If it needs any more salt or lavender essence, add it now.

Add the oil to the caramel batter.

Quickly pour the batter onto the baking sheet. Spread it out evenly with a spoon while it's still hot.

Sprinkle on that last pinch of sea salt.

When cool enough to handle, break it into bite sized pieces.

Done!

A note about the avender essence, there are some bitter and herby notes present when smelling the essence right from the bottle but they did not make it through the boiling. In all the lavender flavour was very smooth and perfectly married the caramelized sugar. Now, I've only tried making these types of caramels with lavender but there are several other essences that I bet would be just as good. How about caramel flavoured with peppermint, cocoa, coffee or Peru balsam (I'm sooooo curious about cooking with that one)...

And, I did have an unexpected guest showing up. I'd seved him caramels if I thought he'd like them but he seemed very content just to nibble on my neibours bushes. Yep, this is another photo taken from my window. As you see the snow is melting away indeed :)

Cepes and Tuberose by Aftelier Perfumes

The Trolls and the Tuberose

In order to describe Afteliers "Cepes and Tuberose" I'll retell you a short story I read a while ago. It's called "Border" and it's from a collection of stories named "Paper Walls" written by Swedish horror author John Ajvide Lindqvist.

The main character is a woman named Tina who hasn't got the happiest of lives. She married to a good-for-nothing guy who cheats on her and spends her money. Furthermore, she's big boned, scarred and, by most peoples standards, downright ugly. She works at the customers office but the only place where she feels at peace is in the forest.

One day, a man passes her at the customs counter and she just knows he's hiding something. He also smells incredibly good. During a routine customs search, nothing out of the ordinary is found, though.

Paper Walls

Later, it turns out that he's renting a room in the house next to hers. She gets more and more obsessed by him. She breaks in to his room, into his car and just sits there, breathing in his smell, at once musky, woody, beautiful, just RIGHT, somehow.

Now, at this time she might be sounding really creepy, but it turns out that the two of them are not really humans at all, they are trolls. He is one of the last ones to have been raised free. Tina was taken away from her parents at a young age, tail cut off, put up for adoption among humans in an attempt to integrate her into society. Her parents were institutionalized, driven insane from being deprived their peaceful existence in the forest.

I've had this story coming to mind ever since I first put on "Cepes and Tuberose". That is how I picture those trolls smelling. It starts off with boozy orange, chocolate and marzipan accord. When the orange wears off the cepes (=porcini) reveal themselves. A mushroom perfume might sound odd, but just think of the truffle pigs. The reason why they are so keen on finding those truffles is that truffles smell just like a female pig in heat. Ok, she seems to be hiding a few inches below the ground, never a good sign, but sometimes you don't ask any questions. Now, smelling of truffles would be a bit much, at least for me, but the earthiness of cepes are the second best thing on my internal mushroom sexiness ranking chart, and in "Cepes and Tuberose" - they smell good! 

There are other notes as well. I get woody cloves and cedar. Sometimes I get something musky. And there is the tuberose, flickering like an elusive forest fairy. Sometimes she's out in the open, sometimes not, but her glowing pixie dust helps  bringing the other notes to life.

To say that "Cepes and Tuberose" smells like an autumn forest would be true but it would not be the whole truth. This is one of those scents that sum up to a whole lot more than the individual notes in themselves. It IS an autumn forest, but it's a sunny one, a happy one, one that is chock full of pheromones, smiling at you, beckoning to enter.






Disclaimer: I read the story "Border" several years ago and I might not have all the details right. There is a lot more to it than what I tell here.
My sample of "Cepes and Tuberose" I bought at the Aftelier Perfumes Website.
Troll image is by Swedish artist John Bauer.