Help with caramel made with coconut milk?

[ctown13]

I'm currently making a haupia cake, which is a Hawaiian cake made with coconut milk, and noticed the beautiful, velvety texture of coconut milk. I love to make caramels and it got me wondering if I could make caramels with coconut milk. I searched the internet, but didn't really find any recipes. I did find dodol, which sounds like an Indian candy, but there weren't very many recipes. I was thinking I could substitute a certain amount of whipping cream with coconut milk or substitute the milk instead of butter. Any ideas or suggestions? I would love any recipes if you have them. I'm not looking for recipes that use flaked coconut, but just the milk. Thanks so much! The thought of silky, coconut caramel makes my mouth water!

[LizD518]

I have no idea whether this is possible, just wanted to chime in and say that it sounds delicious! Hopefully someone can shed some light on the possibility of it working!

[Baylee Chocolate Lady]

I think you would be changing the ratios of fat and moisture. Maybe you could experiment with the coconut milk and cream of coconut? You'd probably have to play with the other ingredients to keep the texture. Please keep us posted whtn you play.

[RobertM]

I think your issue is going to be with the milk fats. What method do you use to make caramel? If you use water with your sugar at the beginning of the cook, perhaps you could replace the water with coconut milk.

[scott123]

The biggest difference between cream and coconut milk/cream are the naturally occurring stabilizers. Cream can tolerate fairly aggressive boiling while coconut milk can't. They put stabilizers in coconut milk (usually guar), but that's more to keep the milk from separating in the can, not preventing it from separating during boiling.

This all being said... sugar, in copious amounts, is a pretty powerful stabilizer, assuming you keep it in a glass/noncrystalline state with the addition of corn syrup/glucose or by inverting it.

The other difference is that the maillard compounds you get from browning the cream are most likely not going to be the same ones you get from browning the coconut milk. They might be close, but the coconut milk will most likely give off nuttier notes as it browns.

Like all great caramels, you will want to caramelize the sugar first, on it's own. Because of the lack of stability in the coconut milk, you might not want to add it directly to the 300ish degree caramel, but instead, add a little water (carefully). I would then heat this back up to a soft-ball stage and then add the coconut milk/butter.

Coconut milk has a little more than half the fat of cream. You can use more butter, or, double the coconut milk. I think that, by the time you bring it up to a caramel like consistency and brown the coconut solids a bit, you're going to lose a bit of the coconut flavor and want that punch from twice the quantity.

[DanM]

I wonder what would happen if you tried the cajeta approach. Simply mix with sugar and baking soda and cook down at low heat. After about 1-2 hours, you have a thick, tasty caramel on your hands!

Dan

[natasha1270]

Coconut Milk Caramels sound delicious! I wonder if there are any good asian confectionary recipe books out there?

Here's a recipe for coconut milk caramels that I found off an internet search:

http://dicedtomato.blogspot.com/2010/01/updated-coconut-milk-caramels.html

I would love to try the David Lebovitz recipe it is based upon too:

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/01/salted-butter-caramels/

[justDeb]

It can certainly be done. In fact, JJ's Sweets in Boulder Colorado (JJssweets.com) has a line of them, and calls them Cocomels. I think I saw them at the last Chocolate Salon in Los Angeles, but didn't taste their samples, so I can't speak to what they're like. The ingredient label for the original recipe lists: Coconut milk (coconut extract, water, citric acid, sodium metabisulfite), organic brown rice syrup, organic evaporated cane juice. No butter or additional fat. Don't know if this is at all helpful since it doesn't use regular sucrose either.

[pastrygirl]

I had some coconut caramels in Vietnam, made by slowly cooking and stirring coconut milk and sugar. IIRC, they were pretty firm. Cooked down, poured between wooden rulers until cool, then cut and individually wrapped.

Several photos of the process here:

[Mjx]

It can certainly be done. In fact, JJ's Sweets in Boulder Colorado (JJssweets.com) has a line of them, and calls them Cocomels. I think I saw them at the last Chocolate Salon in Los Angeles, but didn't taste their samples, so I can't speak to what they're like. The ingredient label for the original recipe lists: Coconut milk (coconut extract, water, citric acid, sodium metabisulfite), organic brown rice syrup, organic evaporated cane juice. No butter or additional fat. Don't know if this is at all helpful since it doesn't use regular sucrose either.

Actually, the 'organic evaporated cane juice' is sucrose

[rarerollingobject]

I've made kaya before (thick coconut milk 'jam') and absentmindedly overcooked it to the point of firm caramel. It has egg in it, so it's not traditional caramel, but I was able to cut it into squares and wrap in wax paper, so...here'sa recipe, I didn't have pandanus so skipped it.

[justDeb]

It can certainly be done. In fact, JJ's Sweets in Boulder Colorado (JJssweets.com) has a line of them, and calls them Cocomels. I think I saw them at the last Chocolate Salon in Los Angeles, but didn't taste their samples, so I can't speak to what they're like. The ingredient label for the original recipe lists: Coconut milk (coconut extract, water, citric acid, sodium metabisulfite), organic brown rice syrup, organic evaporated cane juice. No butter or additional fat. Don't know if this is at all helpful since it doesn't use regular sucrose either.

Actually, the 'organic evaporated cane juice' is sucrose

you're absolutely right; missed the evaporated part.

[Ufimizm]

I saw some TV show where they made Dodol. I found 1 recipe for it and it was just coconut milk, palm sugar and a little water to start if I remember correctly. I stood at the stove stirring constantly and cooking over a low heat. It came out ok, but I do not really do a lot of candy making, so that could be more my fault than anything else.

I was not able to find the recipe I used but, there are a lot of variations for making Doldol. Pastrygirls pictures are very similar to what I saw on TV, but I can’t remember what show it was on either. I did this about 2 years ago.

[nice_guy1812]

I was about to embark on some soft caramels made with fresh (not evaporated) milk from Greweling's Chocolates & Confections, when I realized that I didn't have any milk. I really didn't want to run to the store, so I remembered reading this thread last week and thought I would try it out using coconut milk instead. I substituted coconut milk for the regular whole milk, but kept the whipping cream that was called for. The result was great! It behaved more or less the same when cooking, although I noticed a bit more foaming than usual. The flavour is amazing as well. I was worried that the coconut milk might contribute to excess browning, but it didn't.

I will definitely be making this again!

[ctown13]

Update: so I did it and with great success! I used my favorite fleur de sel caramel recipe from epicurious.com and instead of the cream, I substituted coconut milk from a can. They turned out creamy and with a nice coconut flavor. Everyone raved about them and I am very happy to report that it was WAY easier than I thought! Thank you for all of the excellent suggestions and help!

[jrshaul]

I'm interested as to your procedure. I tried making Bananas Foster with coconut oil, and it just came right out of emulsion. Perhaps it was that the coconut milk was already an emulsion?

[Maxim]

Dodol is supposed to take hours to render down (at least in the Indonesian method), so I too am curious about how you did it.

[ctown13]

I didn't do anything out of the ordinary to make these work, just used coconut milk instead of whipping cream. I made the caramels exactly the way I normally do. Maybe it was luck, but I look forward to trying again!

[Broken English]

Bit late to the thread, but I've made a coconut caramel banana puree before. I just made a regular caramel, tossed some bananas in, and then added coconut cream and salt. It worked well.