Cordial: Salted Caramel

The idea struck me while driving that a salted caramel cordial would be AMAZING. It's that time of year when Starbucks seems to push salted caramel hot chocolate.

I turned to Cordials from Your Kitchen and found a caramel cordial. To my dismay it's what I think of as a "cheater", in that you basically just add alcohol, simple syrup, and a flavoring extract. I later found this recipe from Mixthatdrink on making a more involved version, but I followed the book's recipe.

2 c water
2 c sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon concentrated caramel flavoring extract
3/4 cup brandy
3/4 cup vodka
4 drops caramel food coloring

- Cordials from Your Kitchen, p. 108

Of course, I screwed with the recipe. I'm almost certain that I used 1 1/2 cups of vodka and skipped the brandy, and the vodka would most certainly have been svedka. The flavoring I used I ordered on Amazon in a 3 or 4 pack, by Bakto Flavorings because their listing said they are all natural flavors.

WOW.

It lacks some of the complicated awesomeness of Genrose's famous Raspberry cordial (sitting next to this on the bar) but the Bakto flavoring seems to be of excellent quality. In the future if I need to order a flavoring online, I am going to try theirs first. It also included the colorant, so I left off 4 drops of food coloring.

After 3 or 4 months I tested this with a shot's worth, stirred in some salt  (we pretty much exclusively use kosher salt, I had some Spicewell's Fleur-de-sel which is described as a sweet salt, though I don't think I get that (maybe less powerful saltiness though). I stirred in a tiny amount of salt and the salted caramel shot was absolutely wonderful.

Since I have a lot of svedka laying around, and a few more bottles of this (one batch used less than half a bottle of flavoring) I think I am going to make another large batch as my primary contribution to the Known World Party this summer at Pennsic.

3/21/15 Edit - Multiple taste testers approved! The brewers suggested that the flavors were a bit uncomplicated and suggested I look into using caramel, or making my own, potentially using demerara sugar cones I can get from the local store.

6/18/15 Edit - "Version 2"
I decided to try a clear brandy for version two, and use proper measuring instruments (teaspoon set, rather than food teaspoons). Notes to follow! Judging from the color I may need/want to add more, 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of extract does not seem sufficient at this point.

8/23/15 Edit -
I find that this version, with clear brandy, has a less distinct caramel flavor. Other cordial makers are strongly encouraging me to go to brandy instead of vodka, but I don't think that works for some of these using flavor extracts. It works great for recipes using fruit, juices, etc. but the simpler extract+syrup+alcohol recipes seem to need vodka (or, I suppose everclear, but bleh!)

8/2/15 Edit - "Version 3"
I'm making a double batch right now before I return to Pennsic for War Week. I've decided to make the simple syrup with turbinado sugar ("Sugar in the Raw") because that Just Seems Right for caramel.

8/23/15 Edit -
The "brown" salted caramel (from 8/2) was a tremendous hit. It was a bit too sweet, however. I made it following the same recipe as before but using Sugar in the Raw turbinado sugar. 2 cups water, 2 cups SitR, 1 1/2 cup of vodka. Definitely no need for the food coloring. A few mentioned how sweet this was, and I can agree. I tried uping the caramel flavoring by an extra teaspoon but it was still overpowered by the turbinado syrup. I think next time I will try 1 1/5 cups each sugar and syrup to make it less sweet (but still very sweet!) and give the caramel flavoring a fighting chance.

Ironically I never got to try this with the actual salt in it, though others did.