Salted Honey Caramels with Fleur de Sel

Start with the honey. Find a beekeeper at your farmers market, someone who can tell you which flowers the bees visited that season. Wildflower honey will give you floral notes. Buckwheat runs dark and molasses-rich. Clover is mild and clean. The honey you choose becomes the soul of these caramels.

Good butter matters here too. Look for butter from grass-fed cows, the kind with deep yellow color that tells you the animals ate real pasture. When you combine that butter with heavy cream and raw sugar, then cook it slowly with your honey, something remarkable happens. The sugars caramelize. The milk solids brown. The honey perfumes everything.

Fleur de sel is the finishing touch, those delicate crystals harvested from the surface of salt ponds in Brittany. They do not dissolve. They sit on top, catching light, offering a bright crunch against the soft, yielding caramel beneath. Every meal is a meaningful choice. These small candies are no exception.