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I thought I'd do something a little different than simply showing how to make something.
Instead, I wanted to experiment with something: Sea Salt Caramel-based drinks!
Now, so far my favourite concoction has been a Homemade Sea salt Caramel Latte, which I'll demonstrate on a future post.
In another post, I'll show how I made what is possibly the greatest homemade caramel in the history of mankind.
But first I wanted to try and create something of my own, a kind of 'runs in the family' secret recipe that they'll sing about for generations to come, so far as which they don't even remember my name, just the legends of monsters I slew in order to acquire the ingredients from the peak of a Tibetan mountain.
This will take several renditions I think, as the upcoming result was... eh.
The Main Question
I wanted to know to which extent would chocolate overpower Caramel. This is because it sounds sensible to say a 'caramel hot chocolate' or 'Caramel Chocolate Milk Tea', but somehow when I try, I only really taste the chocolate.
Caramel seems somewhat recessive compared to the dominance of cacao. But, let's try anyway.
For this attempt, I wanted to have a Milk tea with sea salt, caramel and chocolate, to see if I could balance out the flavours. This means that I couldn't go by any recipe (300g of this, 2 spoons of that). I just had to wing it. It's more fun that way.
So, let's go
Step 1:
Put, oh I don't know, 2 bags of any English tea in a pot.
It's not like the bits will leak out or anything as a result of bubbl.ng water shaking it about too rigorously. It'll be fine.
Step 2:
Put some amount of water in the pot. In this case, this whole bottle was about 550ml. Boil it.
Step 3
Put a bunch of milk into the concoction until it looks more like milk than it does tea. That's what a milk tea basically is, as far as I'm aware.
Step 4
Put some cocoa powder in there. In previous attempts to go with actual dark chocolate, I find the drinks to be overly bitter no matter what sugary goodness I put in there. So I'm trying unsweetened powder this time.
Mix that shit in without it getting too clumpy. If there are any clumps just sieve them out later. Or keep them. I like to chew on them.
Step 5
Ah yes, the pièce de résistance!
Homemade Caramel!
Gosh darn it is so dang good.
Put like, 2 or 3 big dollops into the mix. or 4. Just make a note of how much, the point is to find a flavour balance.
Step 6
Add Sea Salt.
Historically, I always put too much salt in everything and ruin everything I make. So instead of going with teaspoons, which seems to have mystical powers forcing me to pile things onto it more than necessary, I decided to go with pinches.
3 pinches.
Step 7
Start working on whipped cream to top it off!
I found this USB single whisk for 17yuan! That's less than $3 (delivery included)! For an electric whisk!
Note: Unless you appreciate white-speckled decor in your kitchen, put the whisk in BEFORE you turn it on.
Step 8
Before finishing the whole thing off, make sure your cat jumps on top of the box of kibble before leaping away, kicking it off the countertop and spilling it all over the most difficult to clean up place in your home: Amongst, and inside, shoes and umbrellas, under the countertop and so on.
If you lack cats, you just have to suffer a life of stress-free calm instead. Sorry.
Final Step
After keeping it over the heat for a while, you should have yourself about a litre of whatever you threw together. Get a cup and pour some in, or if you're like me, just use a measuring jug. It's basically a cup. Americans call them measuring cups.
Get that cream on top and DON'T sprinkle cocoa powder on top like I did, unless you want cocoa lungs.
Drink up.
Results
As I suspected here, the chocolate kind of overwhelmed the flavour, even with no actual chocolate melted in.
However, it didn't overwhelm the salt or the tea. The tea was a weak presence, but certainly there. The Salt was suitably weak and present.
The caramel was hard to distinguish at all, unfortunately.
Overall it tasted... 5/10?
If the Chocolate was less dominant, I would easily have given it an 8/10.
However, I already feel confident it won't match the 15/10 I gave my coffee rendition any time soon.
Next time I'll use Dark Chocolate, but maybe stop at 50% rather than the 70-85% I've used in the past. I'll also probably more than half the amount I usually work with (50g instead of 100g) and hopefully I can get both flavours to come out.
Any secret recipes of a similar ilk should immediately be placed in the comments! No secrets allowed on the chain.