Tag: caramel

Exceptional artisan caramels from southern Vermont

These totally terrific handmade goat milk caramels just came into the Candy Store last week! Everything about them exudes excellence. They’re made by hand at Big Picture Farm, which was founded in 2010 by photographer and artist Louisa Conrad and her husband, the poet and writer Lucas Ferrell. The two met as students at Middlebury College, went to the West Coast for grad school, and then got married. Fifteen years ago, determined to make their dreams come true, they took out loans to buy an old nine-room farmhouse back near the southern Vermont village of Townsend.

Today, the two manage a working goat farm, raise kids (both the goat and human kind), make caramels, and craft artisan goat cheese. They are actively playing their part in making a positive story about American farming. As Louisa says, “The stories behind what’s going to happen in American agriculture are largely dependent on how these transitions go from all of the older farmers to the next generation.”

Louisa and Lucas are very values aligned with what we do here: Regenerative grazing, 100% solar power, and the boxes into which the caramels are packed are beyond beautiful. And most importantly, the caramels taste great. The quality is truly exceptional. Louisa gives credit where credit is definitely due: “The secret ingredient is 100% the milk that we use from our goats that are extremely spoiled.” They’ve won a wealth of awards at the Fancy Food Show and the Good Food Awards over the years. Food critic Florence Fabricant writes in The New York Times, “The candies are simple and irresistible.”

Lucas is also a poet—the blue-collar sun won the 2020 Sundog Poetry Book Award. Although the work of caramel making and poetry writing could seem a strange juxtaposition, he points out that they work in parallel. In the spirit of what I wrote about in “The Art of Business” pamphlet, an interview with the Vermont weekly newspaper Seven Days (founded 30 years ago and still run by Paula Routly, the good friend of my good friend Molly Stevens,) Lucas says,

Poetry and caramels aren’t so different. They share a process of boiling down their material (milk or language) in an attempt to distill, sculpt, or otherwise express the fundamental components of life — in small but sweet and wondrous form! … I think of the farm as art. I think of our caramel as art. They’re things that we’re actively making,

Of his writing, poet Joanna Klink writes in Raptus, “Lucas Farrell throws a spell over everything his voice touches.” I think these artisan goat caramels could do something similar to your taste buds. We have three flavors of the caramels at the Candy Store right now, and all are terrific—Sea Salt & Vanilla, Maple Cream, and Brown Butter Bourbon. They’re all super silky, surprisingly soft and buttery, not too sweet, complexly flavored with a wonderful, lovely, long finish, and a gentle hint of sea salt. (In a way, they remind me of what would happen to the Roadhouse’s remarkable Butterscotch Pudding were it to cook it all the way down to this texture!) Fantastic gift for anyone who loves confectionery like this! Or for that matter, for yourself!

Terrific topping for gelato, cake, toast

Here’s an easy and delicious new taste treat from the crew at the Candy Manufactory. The caramel we’ve been making for years as an ingredient in other confectionery work is now available to take home in 8-ounce cups. If you’re like me and making caramel is not part of your regular cooking routine, then grab some! Since the Candy crew has done all the work for us, the Caramel Sauce is excellent and easy to use.

The Candy Manufactory Caramel, like so much of what we craft around the ZCoB, is made special by the quality of the raw materials that go into it. We long ago made the commitment to cook and bake with Muscovado sugar from the island of Mauritius. Muscovado is essentially old-school brown sugar. Here in 2022, it’s much more work to produce but the flavor is far bigger, more complex, and delicious. Muscovado retains the sugar cane’s natural molasses, and adds great depth and complexity to this sauce, the Zzang! Bar, our Toasted Pecan Pie, the Butterscotch Pudding and Donuts at the Roadhouse, and many more. (We sell the Muscovado sugar at the Bakeshop and Deli as well for your home cooking and baking.) Caramel was likely first made in the Arab world—where sugar was well-established—over a thousand years ago by slowly cooking sugar with water. Milk would have come along much later, most likely in the middle of the 19th century.

This new Caramel Sauce is super tasty on gelato, with cakes, or tortes. Add it to coffee for a caramel latte. Drizzle a bit on French toast or pancakes. Steve Mangigian, managing partner at the Coffee Company, has been dipping slices of autumn apple into it!

Want more from Ari?

Sign up for Ari’s Top 5 e-newsletter and look forward to his weekly curated email—a roundup of 5 Zing things Ari is excited about this week—stuff you might not have heard of!