That Which Shall Not Be Named

More good news about High Fructose Corn Syrup!

....enough said.

The Business End, Part 3: The SBA and Doing My Homework

Who out there knew about the Small Business Administration? The FEDERAL AGENCY DESIGNED TO SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESS IN THE UNITED STATES?

All of you suck for not telling me sooner.

I have an appointment next week to meet with one of their counselors and talk about my business idea, practical issues regarding a food based business, and the resources available from the SBA.

Holly, my friend extraordinaire, has suggested that she would like to be a part of this venture. I will definitely need another set of hands and a better brain than mine on this. And it would be fun to do something with Holly, though I don't want to risk our friendship either. It will be a test of our ability to be open and communicate clearly with each other. Joseph also said he was interested and maybe he can provide some of the data management support.

Tonight, I'm reading Sell Your Specialty Food, and it seems at first glance to be an awesome resource. I'm going to follow the steps that it suggests, the first being to develop a vision statement of what I would like to achieve.

Here goes.

"Love and Caramels (working title) will make unique and creative organic artisan caramels. We will use only organic ingredients with as little refining as possible. We will strive to be aware of the sources of all of our ingredients and to forge relationships with the farmers and craftspeople who make them, creating an unbroken source of energy and love from the earth in what we make. As a company we will be environmentally and in all other ways responsible and impeccably honest in all of our relationships. Love and Caramels will be a way for us to bring joy to our customers, to our partners, and to ourselves and our families."

I know, it's a first draft.

And for a tagline:

"sweet disorder, judiciously arranged."

...And Then The Drinking Started

I got up this morning to greet a sunny day in Denver (at 18 degrees F) and immediately started making caramels.

Today's Flavor: HONEY BOURBON

Yep, the sis had a nice bottle of Kentucky Bourbon in the cupboard, so I figured I would do her the public service of pouring it into the heavy cream as it heated. And then the rest of it into the sugar as it was cooking.

I used some of the honey powder from Savory, as well. They taste amazing, though again, a little too stiff, even though I stopped the cooking process several degrees cooler. So I'm trying one. more. batch...

...which worked perfectly, finished at 235 degrees.

And in one of my many clumsy moments I spilled the bowl of Fleur de Sel on the butcher block and bumped into the ceramic jug with the ground coffee in it, mingling the grounds with the salt... tasted it out of curiosity and stood there in total shock at the subtle salt/coffee flavor, and realized that would be the next caramel experiment.

After I come down off this sugar high.

Creativity At 5,260 FT

People lie. Art should not. ~Daniel Richter

The sis took me to the Denver Art Museum where I fell in love with the paintings of Daniel Richter. I wasn't permitted to take photographs of the paintings themselves, but the security guard allowed me to take this one.

Then I went to the permanent collection of Western Art (sponsored by Coors, of course).

Down in the Corral.

Turn of the Century Bronze

Painting by Daniel Sprick. The detail is amazing in part because it's slightly out of focus. I sat and stared at this for a long time.

Detail from same painting

mmmm. Claes Oldenburg. His piece Typewriter Eraser is in the outdoor sculpture garden in Seattle.

Earlier in the day the sis took me to Savory Spice Shop, where I found some really incredible spices to experiment with in caramels. Here is the booty I gleaned from Savory, including different chiles, Honey powder, Mexican Cocoa, Himalayan Pink Sea Salt, Murray River Flake Salt (from a river! In Australia!)

Tonight I made a batch of cane juice/brown rice and maple syrup caramels with fleur de sel. They came out very hard, which I think is a result of being in Denver at 5,280 feet, and the fact that it's sub-freezing temperatures and therefore very dry. However, the taste is incredible, and we're using splinters of caramel to dip into the different peppers and spices to see how they marry.

It's humbling to go into a spice shop and discover spices that you did not know existed. A picture of three chile peppers:

The dark one is Urfa, also known as Isot pepper -- earthy and smoky and moderately hot. The red flakes are Aleppo, they have a fruitier flavor that is described as "a cross between cumin and cayenne". The threads are korean chile threads, which I thought might be a nice visual as well as flavor addition to a batch of caramels.

The Sis, reading to me from Cookwise: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking about caramels as I'm making them:

I also knitted a cozy for my G1 cell phone. All in all, a productive day.

The Business End, Part 1: A Journey of a Thousand Caramels Begins With a Single Feh.

Now comes the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty. There are many tasks in this business of starting a business that are creative and discretionary (what should I call it? what should I use for packaging? should I incorporate as an LLC?) But some questions are NOT. Some questions just need answers:

1. Do I need a food handler's license?
2. Must I use a commercial kitchen?
3. How can I get my caramels certified Organic Free Range Happy Caramels?
4. What do my labels have to say and will they need a barcode, or is that optional?
5. If I must include nutritional information, how do I find that out or can I do the math myself?
6. Should I just get a job at UW and forget about this?

Feh.

I need to do my homework, but feel free to weigh in with answers if you know them.

In the meantime, however, I shall make more caramels. Feeling uninspired to experiment, I think I'll whip up a batch of classic light butter cinnamon. Perhaps I will experimentally dust some of them with strange things and force my friends to try them.

Also, SEE THIS MOVIE.

Also, I need to figure out what to get everyone for my Birthday Party. Richard and Holly and Elda I have figured out. But Paul? Jack? Chad? Beth? Jessica? Joan? Hmmmm.

Nothing is better than a juicy logistical problem. It's fun to think about each person and try to sort out what they would like, what would be good. Besides caramels, because of course everyone will be getting those.

Caramel Variations: Star Anise and Black Pepper Caramels with Coconut Cream

Um, yeah. Not so much.

It's a successful batch in that you can taste all the individual flavors.

But I just don't like the taste of anise. I like the name "Star Anise" because it sounds mysterious and vaguely perverted. But Anise stirs up vaguely disturbing adolescent memories of when my older stepbrother's best friend's girlfriend was living with us and got pregnant and liked drinking Anisette and listening to Stairway to Heaven.

Still, I thought that Star Anise Caramels would be exotic and sexy. Someone would probably like them.

UPDATED: Holly likes them! I will not throw them in the trash.

Marketing, Step 1: Contact The New York Times

Richard apprised me of an article by Kim Severson in the New York Times: How Caramels Developed a Taste for Salt.

It's a good article about the popularity curve of salt caramels in our culture, broken into four stages, and it gives a great boost to a local Seattle caramel business, Fran's. But it doesn't talk about the healthiness of caramels, except for a nod at the end:

One thing salted caramels conspicuously lack is a health and wellness angle. That surprised Ms. Dornblaser, who said the nation’s obsession with healthier eating drives many current food trends.

I'm sure they are referring to more than just white sugar and high fructose corn syrup, because people seem to think that cream and butter are bad for you. That's just weird.

So, I sent an email to Kim Severson, made the argument for a fifth stage of caramel evolution, "organic, all-natural, unprocessed, free-range caramels", and asked if she would like to taste some of mine.

We'll see what she says.

Spicy Cinnamon Caramels with Chipotle Clove Cream

Elda and Paul requested spicy caramels.

Basic light butter caramel recipe, add cinnamon, fresh grated nutmeg, and ground clove. Soak whole cloves and a big healthy pinch of chipotle in the cream. Cross fingers and hope for the best. And don't rub your nose, because it will hurt for a very long time.

When the caramel had almost reached 240 degrees, which is where I would normally take it off the heat, my friend Dave called to say he was up the street and he wanted to fit me for my custom dry glove rings and could I come out and meet him? I ran out the door and dragged him inside. When I made it back they were at 245, I had no choice but to finish them and pray that they would work.

Verdict: They are of course harder than usual. The flavor is unbelievable. The chipotle is very, very subtle, you can't smell it, you can see little red flecks in the caramel and you can taste it just a bit, but then the slow burn hits after you've had one in your mouth for a while, and it's amazing. Not too hot, though we'll see if sitting around makes them stronger. I've cut them into smaller bites than usual, both because they are harder and to avoid a chipotle overdose.

Next time, I think I will put a whole chipotle pepper in the cream and let it soak for a few hours, and add some molasses to the sugar mixture and see what that does.

Update: I mixed a small amount of fine sea salt and chipotle chile in a bowl and sprinkled just a bit on top of each caramel. NOW they are perfect.

Caramels, Part V: I Am Bewildered With Multiplicity.

O Marvelous! what new configuration will come next? I am bewildered with multiplicity.
- William Carlos Williams, At Dawn, 1914

It takes time to take things in, integrate information, let it blend together with other things, simmer slowly until it reaches the right temperature.

More research.

I went to Whole Foods and stood in the baking section for nearly an hour, reading labels and taking notes. Honey, Agave, Yacon, Fig Syrup, Apple Syrup, Rapadura, Sucanat, Cane Syrup, Barley Malt Syrup... there's a lot to experiment with.

How would these different sugars behave differently in caramels?

So I made another dark batch using Rapadura and added raw Colorado wildflower honey instead of maple syrup in a slightly larger proportion. This time I took them off the stove at 238 degrees. They came out very soft, like taffy, but I figured that was better than too hard (um, this sounds more and more like food p*rn, but how else can I say it?) I could only hope that a little time sitting on a marble slab might firm them up a bit.

So I let them sit awhile, then wrapped some up and mailed some to Richard (along with his Weeds DVD's).

Here is an excerpt from his review:

Wow.... Honestly, I wouldn't change a thing. I think the texture / firmness was perfect: firm enough to not be sticky, but not firm enough to make me fear that it might pull off fillings. The flavor was rich and complex. It almost teeters over the line of tasting too dark / burnt, but doesn't actually cross that line at all.
The salt was sublime, both in taste, texture and quantity.

This, from a man whose cooking makes me murderously jealous, whose emails about cooking make me drool, was high praise indeed.

And it made me think I might be onto something.

Caramels, Part IV: Are You There, Caramel? It's Me, Margaret.

That first batch tasted like the darkest corner of heaven, when the candles sputter out for a moment from the wind produced by angels wings and all you can taste is the dark whisper of the heat left behind. They tasted so good it scared me.

So I made a second batch. This time, because I am constitutionally averse to doing anything the same way twice, I used Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Lundberg Farms Rice Syrup, a little bit of maple syrup, and added a small scoop of French gray sea salt. I waited impatiently while they cooled.

This batch had come out softer and golden blond. They looked more like caramels. And they tasted like, well, if you took the same heavenly candles from before, and this time refined their warmth, and put it on your tongue and let it melt, that's what they tasted like.

In short, they both tasted, well, better than the bad poetry they inspired. And far, far better than any caramel I have ever tasted, ever. EVER.

Ever.

Caramel, Part III: If It's Poison, Here's a Hint. Don't Eat It.

Back to the history.

Most books and experts on starting small businesses will tell you that doing research before you start is really important. And it is. But at this point around a month ago I wasn't thinking about starting a business making caramels, I was just interested in learning how to make them in the first place.

I read literally dozens of caramel recipes and articles about the science of caramel. Caramel is made from some chemical magic that occurs between sugar and the protein in milk, called the Maillard reaction. Most of the recipes (including the one in the previous link) called for various combinations of the following list of ingredients: white sugar, corn syrup, condensed sweetened milk, and butter. Some of them skip the butter. Some call for heavy cream. One rare example suggested using brown sugar. A few add sea salt to make the more haught-sounding "sea salt caramels." I tried a few more batches before Paul and Elda took pity on me, but none of them worked.

However, I couldn't get past the fact that most of them used refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I like to make healthy food. I like slow food, locally grown, organic, raw, food with lots of living enzymes and animal fats in it. My food bible is Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and The Diet Dictocrats. An embarrassingly iconoclastic title, but that should be enough to tell you that I can get kind of worked up about food.

So at this point, after ruining several batches and being faced with the possibility that caramel might not work with healthier ingredients, I was ready to quit this caramel business before it even started.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

If even a single scientific study shows that something kills rats, I'm just not eating it. ( It also, according to several studies, makes you fat, causes diabetes, is mostly made with genetically modified corn, and other wonderful things) It's also manufactured in an absolutely disgusting way. The most charitable thing I have read about high fructose corn syrup is that it's a cheap alternative to refined sugar which is also very bad for you.

But I had to face facts. Although I blamed my caramel disaster on the lack of a thermometer, it very well could have been a result of the unorthodox ingredients I was using. However, now that I knew what generally went into caramel, I wasn't going to eat it unless I made it myself, and I didn't think that was really an option. So I decided to make my next batch of caramels using what I felt were better, healthier ingredients, and risk another disaster, rather than use refined sugar and HFCS.

Using the thermometer this time, using Rapadura, some Billington's Molasses Sugar, a touch of Organic Maple Syrup, Vanilla, Heavy Cream and Butter, I cooked a new batch to 254 degrees.

It came out dark. Very, very dark. And they were harder than I wanted them to be. It didn't look like caramel, frankly and I had already resigned myself to disappointment.

And then I tasted it.

Caramel, Part II: If You're Going To Fail, Fail Spectacularly.

I'm cavalier with recipes. But sometimes in the kitchen, as in life, this will get you bitchslapped.

Though I managed to produce an interesting but impractical slurry, as caramel it was a complete and utter disaster. I confess I was just trying to eyeball it and guess when the mixture bubbling on the stove was hot enough to be caramel, which I can testify does not work, so don't try it.

Perhaps there are caramel masters sitting high atop mountains who can make caramel without a thermometer. I am not one of them.

I am often the object of the charity of my friends Paul and Elda, and in this case, after listening to me complain and probably to shut me up, they gave me a spare candy thermometer, and also a high quality steel loaf pan which I used to cool subsequent batches.

And then, somewhat more humble, I went back to the computer and did some research.

Caramel, Part I: I Have Walked a Mile for a Caramel.

I love caramel. Did I say love? I have eaten caramel and left behind the ice cream it came in. I have gotten drunk on rum caramel bread pudding. I have followed caramel around, trying to get it to go on a date with me, until it called me a stalker and got an order of protection and moved to another state.

So here is the story of how I am starting a small business making caramels. It remains to be seen whether it will be successful, but hopefully it will be fun to watch.

Over the holidays, in an Obama-inspired glow, I decided to try my hand at making home-made caramels to give them as gifts. I found a few different caramel recipes, sort of melded them together using alternative (read, unrefined, organic, and as locally-produced as possible) ingredients that I liked, and casually attempted my first batch.

Ha. Ha ha. Sigh.