Hello! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We did and are only just coming out of the fog of festivities to realise it’s a ‘real’ day, that we need to go into town for supplies (urgh) and that the tree should probably come down soon (pooh).
Christmas eve was at our house and for dessert we just passed around a big platter of homemade honeycomb, cherries, nougat and these beautiful salted butter caramels. It was easy and delicious.
The bringing together of butter and salt is one of cooking’s oldest and most successful pairings. And having spent an evening recently with two lovely people bringing these ingredients together in their own little road-show, I was inspired to do so in my own favourite way – caramels.
Olssons have been selling salt in various formats for many years, mostly to farmers in the form of salt licks for livestock and more recently, to chefs and home cooks in the form of their fleur de sel style flaky sea salt. Just before Christmas, Alex Olsson joined up with Sydney’s butter king Pepe Saya for a salt and butter road show. We went along to the producers’ dinner at local store The Agrestic Grocer which launched the Orange road show and were spoilt with an amazing feast of local food and wine (including our venison), all complemented with butter and salt from these innovative producers. Yes, there really was a lot of love in the dining room that night.
After the weekend I was well stocked with great butter and salt, so thought I’d make a batch for Christmas (they last for weeks when kept in the fridge in an airtight container). The recipe is on lovely Emily’s blog The Beetleshack today.
This looks amazing Sophie…yum! Just before Christmas I made the Salted Maple Honeycomb that you had on one of your Friday lists recently. It was SO good, definitely a recipe to keep. I broke it up into large pieces and packed it into white cardboard boxes for little Christmas gifts. Your links are always useful!
Your dessert platter sounds perfect. I hope you are enjoying the holiday season x