sweet candy perseverance

Everybody knows that perseverance pays off. Just so we don't forget, here's another story about it.

I tried to make some puff-rice candy and when I was thinking about how much I would make, I had some feeling that I should first try to make just a little. (Although I usually think big in terms of food.)
So I started and was amazed how butter and sugar transformed in my much hotter than 100°C pot. When it started to look good I waited a bit until I turned off the heat and just in that couple of seconds the thing got dark and stinky like hell. I was so courageous to try some of it, but it tasted very... carcinogenic :-(
But here's the good news: after cleaning up the mess (and throwing the black candy monster into the garbage where I hope it will not breed and let it's offspring menace my suite mates) I gave it another try, this time closely monitoring the hot pot to figure out what would be the moment just before the irreversible would happen. And it is very interesting indeed: at first, butter and sugar are bubbling happily in the pot. But after some time the bubbling stops, the consistency changes and the mass slowly turns brown. This time I just let it go brown a bit and then took it off. I threw some puffed rice into the pot and mixed it with the caramel candy. Pour in a container, let cool and there you got your crispy sweet.

Actually I am writing this post just to remind myself of how I did it, so that next time I can hope to succeed with the first try.

Maybe you are wondering why I don't provide any measurements with the recipe, but really I didn't use any. Start with 50g butter, add sugar by instinctive measure, make caramel and add puffed rice by instinctive measure. The only critical thing is to find the right moment to make caramel without burning it. And that's why I am writing this post.