Pumpkin Spice Caramels
Classic chewy caramel squares get a pumpkin spice flavor profile. This is one of my favorite fall candies to make!
A lot of people think caramel is hard to make. If this is you, don’t worry, I used to feel totally dumbfounded by caramel too. I tried recipe after recipe but something always seemed to get screwed up. Eventually I discovered what I was doing wrong and since then I’ve realized that caramel is actually very easy as long as you follow some rules. Let’s talk about some of the problems with caramel:
Problem #1: When you start the caramel by putting the sugar, water, and corn syrup in a pan, a little OCD person inside of you says “look at how undistributed those ingredients are, stir it, STIR IT!!!!”
Tell that evil voice to shut up and do not stir it. Otherwise, this will be the death of your caramel before you even began, and your caramel will crystallize and get gritty. Even though the ingredients look undistributed, it will all eventually melt into a very homogenous sugar syrup, like this:
Problem #2: caramel requires patience + human beings are not patient = burned caramel
When you make caramel, you need to watch it. Caramel is a diva, you see. It’s going to take its sweet time getting brown at all, then when you turn your back to the stove for two seconds to get a spoon, it’s practically on fire (okay, I’m exaggerating a little). It’s in our nature to look for shortcuts and do things faster but keep the heat at medium and be patient with it.
After the sugar turns clear, it will start to develop a golden honey amber color, like this:
To make these caramels pumpkin-y, heat up some cream, pumpkin puree, butter, and spices in the microwave:
Give it a good stir and you’ll have a pumpkin cream mixture:
Standing back (it will bubble ferociously), add the pumpkin cream to your amber sugar syrup:
And this brings us to…
Problem #3: You don’t have the right tools.
You can follow all the necessary rules for making caramel but if you don’t start with the proper equipment, your journey to caramel will be rough.
- Use a heavy pan with a thick bottom. If you make your caramel in a super crappy, thin bottomed pan, the bottom layer of your caramel will likely scorch.
- Use an accurate thermometer. You need to cook this to the soft ball stage, to 248 degrees F. There’s no way you can guess that. Spend $20 and get a thermometer if you don’t have one. There are several brands that make some well rated thermometers in the $20 range.
- Use a good spatula that can scrape the bottom of the pan well. Okay, so you’re probably wondering how can you use a spatula if you’re not supposed to stir? After you’ve fortified the caramel with butter and cream, you can stir the caramel without risking crystallization.
Pumpkin Spice Caramels
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups sugar
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/4 cup light corn syrup
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 3/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/16 tsp ground allspice
- 1/16 tsp ground ginger
- 1/16 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- good quality sea salt for sprinkling
Instructions
- Line an 8×8 pan with parchment paper.
- Place the sugar, water, and corn syrup in a saucepan (don’t stir it together) and cook over medium heat until amber colored (approximately 10 minutes). Again, don’t stir during this process (you risk crystallizing the caramel), just swirl it gently in the pan if you need to move it around a bit.
- In the meantime, heat the cream, pumpkin puree, butter, salt, and all the spices together until melted, either in a saucepan or in the microwave.
- Once the sugar syrup has turned to an amber color, slowly and carefully pour in the pumpkin cream mixture, being aware that the caramel will bubble up a lot (wear oven mitts if you’re concerned).
- Return the pan to medium heat and cook for about 15 more minutes until it reaches 248 on a thermometer (the soft ball stage), adding the vanilla extract right before it reaches 248. Pour into the parchment lined dish and refrigerate for a few hours until hard enough to cut into squares, then sprinkle the tops with a little bit of sea salt. Enjoy!
Notes
I’ve made this both with an electric stove and a gas stove, and as expected, cooking with a gas stove will go much quicker. Be sure to keep your eye on the caramel.
Nutrition
Nutrition is estimated using a food database and is only intended to be used as a guideline for informational purposes.
Disclosure: This post contains an Amazon affiliate link.
189 Comments on “Pumpkin Spice Caramels”
I use my pizza cutter daily. We use it to cut up everything for the kids. Such a great tool.
and I liked Dexas on Facebook. 🙂
Thanks for the great caramel recipe! Sounds delicious and perfect for fall.
My favorite kitchen gadget is my cookie dough scoop. I look forward to baking cookies just so I can use this handy-dandy little scoop, and I’m guaranteed to have perfect sized cookies everytime.
My favorite tool is my immersion blender. I rarely blend with it, though:) I use the chopper attachment for garlic, herbs, and other small chopping chores. I also love my silicone spatulas. I use them all of the time.
I love love love my pampered chef baking stones! You will never bake cookies or pizzas on a baking sheet again. They turn out perfect everytime. Even someone like me (not real great in the kitchen) find it hard to mess them up! lol Thanks for the recipe I will be giving these a try real soon. And I am now following Dexas on facebook for the extra entry! 🙂
My favorite kitchen tool is probably my wire wisk. I have 1 plastic coated one and four steel ones in different sizes depending on what I’m doing.
My favorite kitchen tool is my micro plane zester with measuring shield. I love the handle and the measuring cup catcher for the zest or cheeses. It feels great and works perfect!! Great tool!!
Pumpkin caramels – what a great new taste treat!
My favorite kitchen tool is the ball whisk. It’s so much easier to use because you know that most of the ingredients stay in the bowl rather than getting stuck in a standard whisk.
Awesome how-to Joanne! Great looking caramels — never thought of a pumpkin spice flavor! My *favorite* kitchen tool? Wow, that’s hard. While it’s super tough to pick just one, right now I’m really loving my green silicone whisk. It’s mixes everything so well and it just feels so good in my hand. (Hmm. That sounds weirder than I thought. But you know what I mean.) 😀
I miss friends too … Great tips 🙂
I’m up for your cool give-aways ! I am really thinking about trying these caramels…they sound wonderful, and with your great tutorial, I feel ‘confident’ ! Love your site !
What a fun giveaway and I can’t wait to see your new page! It’s easy to say my favorite is my stand mixer…..and I love it, but I have a beautifully seasoned cast iron pan I’m currently seeing….and I think it’s true love!
My favorite kithen tool is the beautiful set of Global knives that my oldest son bought as a gift for me several years ago. I’m so excited to try my hand at making the carmels. You’ve taken the fear factor right out of it.
I also follow Dexas on Twitter
My favorite thing in the kitchen has to be my Global Knives – awesome, sharp, and couldn’t live without them!
I have found that calibrating the thermomter is key for me. Altitude affects everything! I did caramels until 248 last year and they were hard as a rock. I had to do until 220 at my altitude to get them soft and chewy!
I liked Dexas on FB. I love my immersion blender. Not that I use it much, but when I need it, it is invaluable, also my micro grater/zester. A good spatula would be, not only so needed and wanted, but well…needed and wanted about sums it up !