ESPRESSO ESPRESSO ESPRESSO (CARAMELS)

These are espresso caramels and they are my favorite candy that I've ever made in my entire life.

The first recipe I used was an espresso caramel recipe and it didn't set up correctly- I had a gooey delicious mess that I had no idea what to do with. I decided that I would reboil it and try to get it to the hard ball stage...of course that didn't work because of candy laws and the way candy works, so I ended up with espresso toffee. It actually ended up not being hard-break-your-teeth toffee, it was actually really good, melt-in-your-mouth toffee. But it still frustrated me because it wasn't what I wanted.

I then tried the apple cider caramels recipe from the previous post and instead replaced the apple cider with espresso and it worked out fantastically! I put about 1/3 cup of finely ground espresso into a coffee press and added maybe 3/4 cup of boiling water to it, let it stand for a few minutes and pressed out about 1/3 cup of espresso. There were grounds that got out but they actually make the caramels look prettier and give them a stronger taste. I'm sure you could use instant espresso or coffee instead as well.

With the amount of espresso and bits of grounds that are in these caramels, they taste strongly like espresso but still with sweet notes of caramel. They kind of taste like a strong caramel frappuccino maybe? They're delicious, try them! Now I might try subbing other liquids into that recipe...