#impulsecaramel

Herein I attempt to recreate a Wednesday night post-work recipe for coconut milk caramels.

Why post-work? Because I realized our international fellows were finishing their rotations and the next day was their last day on duty.

Why coconut milk? Because that was possibly the only thing left in my fridge. The Silk "original" sweetened version because it's the only one I can find at the Korean grocery store down the block.

Added bonus: this recipe is what I like to call "fail-safe." Because you don't need a candy thermometer, just a good eye and a lot of patience. I suspect you can even make it while nursing a glass of wine, though 1) not me, I'd end up coated in kitchen napalm, and 2) I think I was motivated by sheer desperation, which is the true mother of invention, rather than alcohol.

What you will need:
2 heavy-bottomed saucepans, small to medium sized
1 loaf pan, lined with parchment paper
1 cup coconut milk
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup light corn (Karo) syrup
1 tsp sea salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water

Line your loaf pan with parchment paper and set aside.

In one of your pans, bring coconut milk, butter, corn syrup, and sea salt to a low boil and stir until dissolved. Keep over low heat while you do your napalm-making.

To your other pan, add sugar and water and turn up the heat to about medium. Cook until the mixture turns thickened and bubbly and dark amber in color, occasionally scraping it off the sides of the pan with a silicone spatula if you value your pan.

Add your sugar mixture to your milk mixture, stirring constantly, and bring up to medium heat. Yes, you will form lumps. Yes, they will dissolve.

Continue to cook your caramel, stirring constantly, until it boils, thickens, and coats your spatula. Once it reaches the consistency of a thin custard (strings, rather than straight-up drips, off the spatula), cook another 1-2 minutes and then remove from heat.

Pour slowly into prepared loaf pan. Slowly to avoid napalming yourself, and also to allow the bubbles to settle.

Allow to cool to room temperature in a relatively non-humid place if possible. Because caramel is "approximately <5% water and extremely hygroscopic" (credit for that quote goes to my mad scientist boyfriend), it will act like a sponge on steroids. I used my (very much turned off!) oven since we're in the middle of a heat wave, but having cooled caramel on the kitchen counter in New York, I suspect most normal room climates should be reasonable.

When your caramel block reaches room temperature or you're really itching to go to bed because it's 11PM on a school night, stick it in the fridge to chill overnight (or at least 2 hours).

The next day, break out the cutting board and a greased knife (any oil will do, including olive which is what I usually have lying around), cut a shit-ton of wax paper squares for wrapping, and then remove your caramel from the fridge and part it from the parchment paper.

Working quickly (mine started to get goopy at the 15-minute mark in 80+ degree Fahrenheit temperatures and 80% humidity so plan accordingly), cut candies into approximately 1-inch by 2-inch rectangles and wrap them in wax paper.

Serve to your favorite departing international fellows as a token of appreciation, along with the giant potluck feast resulting from EVERYONE deciding to bring food.

Makes approximately 40 candies. I think. One of these days I'll actually count it.

So, I never said I dress like a normal person

Well, I mean, I never said I didn't either, but I've never had a great grasp of what constitutes normal. Which is where items such as the one pictured here come from:

I forgot to mention the LA Fabric District is friggin' awesome. Fabric on sale by the pound? Yes, please! After splurging about 20 bucks on laceweight yarn at the shop across the street, I happened upon this blue stripy number. Maybe about a couple yards' worth (who knows, I didn't measure it, just plopped it...on...a...scale...). I wrapped it around my torso like a towel and reveled in it for a while. The damage came out to something like $2.50. It had to become a dress.

So, what does a dress in blue stripy lightweight knit fabric look like? In my mind (and in a mini Moleskine travel notebook) I sketched out all kinds of drapes and sleeves and ties and in the end just couldn't be bothered. My excuse was a dire need to let the fabric shine through. Whatever, lazy girl dress with pockets!

The initial cutouts were something like this:

I did a very thin strip of interfacing at the collar and armholes in the same fabric. The pockets were also made of leftover dress fabric. Because I went through my linings and said, "eh..." It's got a very comfy drape to it, and because I couldn't be bothered with zippers and buttons and all that nonsense, it's a dress I can pull over my head and forget about. Did I mention it has pockets???

The only problem is figuring out where to wear it. I mean, I work in a lab. I'm dating a guy who works in a lab. My family doesn't want me wearing my handmade confections anywhere within a 20 mile radius of them. I'm pretty sure they have a restraining order after I wore my blue Marilyn Monroe "Seven-Year-Itch" dress to a family friend's wedding. So...if anyone can name an occasion (besides lounging around the apartment with a glass of wine and pincurls setting in my hair), I'd love to hear it.

Rosy

Some days you make a hat, and some days you play with DNA.

I happen to do both, incidentally, though not...as commonly as that statement might lead you to believe. I did however absolutely gush and rave over the GENEie hat pattern as it made its way through Ravelry. Not being possessed of an infinite range of solid colored soft worsted, however, I opted for the cabled version in a metallic gray, and, this being around the time of the March for Science, pinned my favorite Etsy pin to it for extra badassery.

Unfortunately, as my luck would have it, in April I happened to go on an away rotation halfway across the country, with Raiden in tow, and somewhere between the security line at JFK and the airport gate, the hat--with pin--disappeared into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again. Well, by me at least. One can only hope someone equally geeky picked it up and is now enjoying the spoils.

Never mind the loss of the Rebel Alliance pin (I have a different one attached to a suit jacket so not all is lost), I happened to have a small hank of the soft gray worsted left, so in the midst of moving all the way across the country I decided to make another hat...only to realize there was no way in hell that would be enough yarn.

Never one to be daunted by a yarn shortage, however, I devised my own way out. Not enough mathematical sense to be an engineer IRL, but enough to turn GENEie's DNA cable on its edge, work it back and forth on two needles, graft ends together, and voila headband! In this version, garter stitch (like you would use to edge a shawl) takes the place of ribbed edges, and the stand-alone double helix shares the spotlight with nobody ever. Because it is lovingly ripped off of another science-lover's hard work, however, I wasn't about to make an official PDF masterpiece of it. It does lend a bit of credence to the name I've given it, though.

Rosalind Franklin, disparagingly referred to as "Rosy" by Watson and Crick, was the one who, along with her colleague Maurice Wilkins, used X-ray crystallography to capture the structure of DNA. Her now-iconic X-shaped black-and-white photograph of the double helix in cross section almost surely had some influence on the boys' even more iconic 3-D model. Unfortunately for Franklin, she never received the same recognition as her colleagues: since the Nobel Prize isn't awarded posthumously, Wilkins shared the award with Watson and Crick when their work was duly toasted and immortalized. So in the spirit of scientific discovery--and all the drama that might entail--I give you Rosy!

Rosy (A Sideways Variation on GENEie)

Pattern notes:

Since this is an adaptation of an existing pattern rather than a new pattern, I did not do a gauge square or any of the usual preparation. That said, your gauge is whatever is sufficient to make 4 repeats of the 26-row double helix stretch comfortably around your noggin. The piece starts with a provisional cast-on (I'm a fan of the one-step Purl Soho version myself) and is worked back and forth to the desired length and the edges grafted together with kitchener stitch (again, plug for the Purl Soho instructions--I don't work for them, just bought some delicious yarn from them once when I still lived in New York). Use extreme caution when putting your provisional edge on a needle--I lost 2 stitches and had to improvise them back in. You may block or not, but personally I used acrylic yarn and ain't nobody got time for trying to make that do any bidding but its own. Chart only, because I'm too lazy to bother writing out a pattern, so don't go looking too hard.

 

Materials:

1 pair US size 8 knitting needles

Loops & Threads Soft & Shiny Solids (311 yd/284 m per 170 gm), Gray, somewhat <100 yd

Cable or tapestry needle for cables (and tapestry needle for grafting and finishing)

Crochet hook if desired for provisional cast-on of choice

Getting started:

Using waste yarn and provisional cast-on of choice, cast on 23 stitches. Knit 1 row. This will become your provisional edge that you will thread onto a new needle, because you really need to start the cables on your working yarn not your waste yarn.

Work that chart:

Starting with Row 1 (RS row), begin working chart from bottom to top, going from right to left on odd (RS) rows and left to right on even (WS) rows. The 5 stitches on each side form your garter "rib" border. Work chart 4 times or however many full times it takes to fit comfortably around your head.

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					knit on RS; purl on WS
		●			purl on RS; knit on WS
		◊			knit through back loop RS; purl through back loop WS
		/	/		C1: on RS hold stitch in back, knit next stitch, knit held stitch; on WS hold stitch in back, purl next stitch, purl held stitch
		\	\		C2: on RS hold stitch in front, knit next stitch, knit held stitch; on WS hold stitch in front, purl next stitch, purl held stitch
		●/	/		C3: on both sides hold stitch in back, knit next stitch, purl held stitch
		\	\●		C4: on both sides hold stitch in front, purl next stitch, knit held stitch

Pull it together:

With right sides facing inward (remember, your background is a wrong-sided stockinette panel so you want kind of the opposite of what you'd do in a stockinette situation), graft ends together with kitchener stitch.

Weave in ends, block if desired, and wear to your next lab meeting 'cause you know they keep it cold as the Ninth Ring of Dante's Inferno in that place!

Bonus: If you've held on this long, have a poem from my (probably never to be published 'cause I can't be bothered) "A Theory of Space and Time" collection...

Masters of the Universe

“Now see here, gents,

we shall have it all

one day: the key

to the kingdom,

I say of life,

and you fine gentlemen

of the universe,

God be our witness –

Rosy, dear, well done,

we'll take it from here.

Show the boys your toy

and how to take

such pretty pictures –

smile, don't be shrill –

we all want the same

as you, don't we lads? –

there's a good girl,

a fine help, almost

as good as a man.”

In her darkened corner

the crystals radiate

like microscopic stars,

etch perfect X formations

neither male nor female

at this magnitude,

but simply perfect,

pinned in a particle beam

like those that powered

hot dark beginnings

and quarks full of God,

set primordial pools brewing

a potion that dreams

of roles and genders

and writes the code

of its own destruction,

the seeds already germinating

somewhere she can feel,

taunting to be caught.