Granulated Caramel - You didn't know you needed this in your life.

"Granulated Caramel" is, simply, granulated sugar which has been caramelized without melting it first.

Previously considered impossible, research in the last few years has shown that sugar can be caramelized at temperatures well below the point at which it starts to liquefy. (Links here, here and here.) The result is a substance that retains the dryness and texture of granulated sugar, but has the color and flavor of caramel.

This new form of caramel can not only be substituted nearly one-to-one with sugar in many recipes, but can also be rapidly converted into liquid caramel with a tiny bit of moisture and some heat, or turned into caramel sauce by adding some cream and/or butter and a pinch of salt, microwaving to a boil and stirring. It's nearly as shelf-stable as plain sugar, needing only a container closed against excessive humidity. Plus, there's practically no risk of accidentally overcooking and scorching the caramel, as you might with stovetop caramel.

This recipe is adapted from some relatively recent research (not mine), with some steps clarified based on my own experiments.

TL;DR:

• Bake white sugar at 300°F/150°C for one to five hours, stirring every hour or so, until caramelized to your liking.
• Cool while stirring, and/or break up any large hard lumps in a blender.

Ingredients/Equipment:

• Refined white sugar. (You want exact measurements? Fine. "½ tray.")
• A pie pan, baking tray, or cookie sheet large enough to hold the sugar. Something wide, flat, and with enough room to be able to stir and redistribute the sugar.
• Something to stir with, preferably with an edge that won't scratch whatever tray you use. A very firm rubber spatula is ideal.
• A bowl large enough to hold the sugar, with enough room to stir it comfortably without spilling too much.
• An oven.
• (Optional) A food processor or Magic Bullet.

Procedure:

• Set your oven to 300°F/150°C. The baking time will be long enough that you won't need to worry about proper pre-heating.
• Spread the sugar out in a flat even-ish layer in the baking pan/tray/sheet. To make the later steps easier, don't fill it more than halfway to the top - the sugar will expand a little, and you'll need room to stir. The layer shouldn't be too much more than an inch deep, for even baking.
• Place the tray of sugar in the oven for 1 to 5 hours, depending on how deeply you want the sugar to be caramelized. The sugar will progress from off-white with a hint of caramel flavour after one hour, to a deep brown-sugar brown with strong caramel flavour after five hours.
• If you're baking for more than an hour, take the sugar out of the oven about once an hour and carefully stir it around the pan, lifting the bottom layers to the top as you do so. This will help disperse the moisture released during caramelization, and even out any unevenly baked sugar.
• Once the sugar is caramelized to your liking, remove it from the oven. If left to cool on its own at this point, the sugar will stick together into large hard clumps. So, transfer the hot sugar to a bowl before it starts cooling, and quickly (but carefully) lift and stir the sugar (with a spoon or spatula - it'll be very hot!) as if you're trying to air it out, until it cools down, breaking up any large lumps as you find them. (If the sugar cools down too fast in the bowl or too much on the tray, you can also break up any large hardened lumps (once cool) with a food processor.)
• As a final optional step, you can pass the sugar through a mesh sieve to remove any small clumps, then briefly blend those clumps in a food processor to break them up.

Notes:

• You can do this at temperatures as low as 250°F/120°C, but it'll take much longer. Going much above 300°F/150°C is not recommended, as you will run the risk of liquefying the sugar before it caramelizes.
• You can go for longer than five hours to get an even deeper caramel, but the sugar will become progressively stickier/clumpier and harder to work with, and eventually collapse into liquid if baked too long. But, as long as the sugar hasn't completely liquefied in the oven, it will still be a dry crystalline powder once cooled. If you want to push past five hours, reducing the temperature and have some patience.
• Get the sugar out of the pan and into the cooling bowl as quickly as you can get it out safely, or you might be chiseling it out.
• Granulated caramel will rapidly absorb moisture from anything nearby, quickly dissolving and liquefying. It will stick to the top of still-warm cookies from residual moisture, and you can sprinkle a dry layer on the bottom of a ramekin with a pinch of salt to make the easiest crème caramel ever.
• In recipes where sugar helps provide structure to baked goods (e.g. meringues), you may need to add a greater amount by weight of granulated caramel when substituting for sugar, depending on shade. A five-hour-plus caramel might need up to twice as much caramel as the amount of sugar it's replacing. When in doubt, test with a small batch first.

bon appetit