Ooey Gooey Caramel Kisses

This recipe comes from my grandparents so you know it's going to be excellent. I mean, have you ever eaten something that was made using somebody's grandparents' recipe and not loved it? Well, even if you have, it wasn't one of my grandparents' recipes (remember the pickles?) and it most definitely wasn't this one.These things are good. Really good. And best of all, there's not a lot of ingredients and they're a cinch to make! (Simple stuff usually is the best, isn't it?)



Gather up:

3/4 lb butter
2 c white sugar
2 c brown sugar
1 16 oz bottle dark Karo corn syrup (light should be fine too)
1 16 oz can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated)

Optional: 1 c chopped walnuts

Easy enough so far right? Let's keep going!

Melt the butter in a large pot (6-8 qts) add the sugars and corn syrup and cook over medium for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the condensed milk (and nuts, if you're using them). Cook until a candy thermometer reads Firm Ball. Remove from heat and pour into a
10 1/2 x 15 1/2 pan (or a mixing bowl that you can eat it out of with a spoon in front of a movie later...)


And that's about it! I mean, there's more to the actual recipe, but it mainly involves waiting until the caramel cools and cutting it up and wrapping it in wax paper, but that's a lot of work. A lot of unnecessary work. I mean, why wrap it up just to unwrap it again? It would make sense to do that if you were going to be giving some away to somebody, but you won't be doing that, trust me. You're going to keep all of this ooey gooey goodness to yourself. Not only that, but the way my grandparents' recipe reads, they actually say the yield of candy is between 250-300 pieces! I don't know how the hell they came up with that number- I got about 15...
I suppose if you really want to give some away or something, you can probably figure out the wrapping in wax paper part on your own. I just left mine in the pan and scooped it out by the spoonful. Like I said, simple=best. A couple notes, though: the original recipe says to grease the pan that you're going to pour the caramel into with butter. I did that, but found it to be unnecessary, especially in the summertime. Also, on my candy thermometer it says "firm ball" is 245-250, so I shut the heat off right at 245 and poured it into the pan. Well, the caramel turned out pretty gooey (hence the name). Perfect for eating with a spoon, but maybe a little difficult to eat with fingers. I was thinking that maybe next time I'd try heating it to a few degrees higher, when I noticed on the recipe that it said in parentheses after firm ball, (248).
(Probably should have read the entire recipe before starting, eh?)


P.S. I took some photos of my batch of ooey-gooey-ness. If any of them turn out, I'll post one or two in the next few days when I get my film developed.