Although I got raves, I’m curious about the recipe. Followed it almost exactly. (Made home-made grenadine.) Cooked caramel to 360°, at which point it was black, not amber. Glaze ended up almost molasses colored. Am wondering if there’s a typo & that caramel should have been cooked only to 260, not 360. Comments please?

No Ric, there must be a problem with your thermometer as caramel at 360 should not be black.  You can actually take caramel about 20 degrees higher than that, and it will still be amber, so you must have been way above this mark.

I don’t know how common this problem is with thermometers, but if it makes you feel any better, my thermometer stops working at caramel temperatures.  It just stops rising so one is tempted to burn the sugar, because it doesn’t seem to be getting hotter.  Sounds what happened to you, too.  I just go by color and aroma, to suit my taste.

similar to Julie, unless you have a remote probe thermometer, it can be hazardous to stick a thermometer on 360oF caramel.

when I make caramel cage work, I go by color all the time, there is a fine point when caramel first turns light amber (what I call yellow), and from light amber to dark amber (what I call orange), this is how far I go.

thanks to the lowering cost of electronics, I am very happy with my cdn quicktip and with my cdn infrared, these has been serving my needs quite well.

What kind of sugar did you use?  I use organic sugar which already has a tint to it and I think the temp may vary due to impurities in it.  I tend to go by colour and smell when just making a sugar/water mixture.  The temp rise can be very FAST - don’t ever walk way from it!

Annie

yeah, at 260 your sugar would only be slightly yellow.

I was using Component Design probe digital thermometer. I’ve used it several years & know it to be accurate. This morning I just double-checked it against two other thermometers—one a Taylor candy & the other a Taylor meat. The candy & probe thermometers were accurate @ 212F/boiling water; the meat ran 10F cool. I’ll double check it & the Taylor candy against each other, later to see how they work at caramel temps. I just checked Joy of Cooking (Oct 82 printing). It says between 310 & 338F sugar turns dark golden, & black @ 350F. I was using Whole Foods Organic Granulated Sugar (unbleached).

Just a note, The Joy of Cooking sugar temps are inaccurate. I trust the temps Rose lists in her books, and I’ve never had a problem (365 for dark amber caramel, which at my altitude would actually be 10 degrees less than that). It’s either the sugar that you used (organic unbleached sugars have impurities and should not be used for sugar syrups. Beet sugars should not be used either), your thermometer, or you used the wrong temp for your altitude (you have to subtract 2 degrees for every 1000 feet above sea level). My probe thermometers (which are used for meats) don’t go above 250, so it’s possible you overcooked it not realizing that your thermometer wasn’t registering the temperature. You should always use a candy/deep frying thermometer for sugar.

Roxanne

Yes, I can confirm from experience also that those temperature listings in Joy of Cooking are completely inaccurate.  You can take caramel to 380 without burning it (although that is pretty much the limit)—I usually do around 365 as Roxanne says.