Unfortunately, I didn't love the ones I brought to the party. I think I let the sugar-water-corn syrup mixture go a little too far before adding the cream, I candied the bacon so it wasn't as much of a contrast to the chewy caramel as I wanted, and I thought I could get away with not individually wrapping them. That was a big goopy mistake! All of the caramels managed to merge back together over the course of the evening. Lessons learned, I guess, but I needed to get it right!
First thing to correct was to replace the candied bacon with super crispy pan fried bacon. I let it cool completely and then crushed it up for topping the caramel. Next, I had to start adding the cream mixture when the caramelizing sugar was a lighter color. Once the sugar started to get a little bit of color, I stood with a watchful eye ready to turn off the burner and then add the cream. This is one of those things where you probably aren't going to get it right the first time but you'll definitely learn your lesson when you taste the slightly bitter flavor of overcooking the sugar base.
And the final correction was the individual wrapping of caramels. I cut out pieces of parchment paper just big enough to wrap around the cut up chilled caramels and then twisted the ends. It is a bit of a finesse to get twisted ends without ripping the paper. The best method I found was to wrap the parchment over the caramel like you're starting to wrap a present, push the loose ends on top together, and then twist at both ends in opposite directions.
I decided to make the batches half bacon and half salted because my sister is not a bacon fan (blasphemy, I know!). About 6 slices of bacon will cover half of an 8x8 cake pan, so a whole package of would work for the entire batch with a few extra slices for the chef. The side that wasn't topped with bacon got a healthy sprinkling of sea salt on top.
Make these as a host gift and you will definitely get a second invite!
