This post is a shout-out to my cousin’s wife Beth, who I always knew had a “knack” for candy and sweets (let’s just say that at a family dinner, you always want Beth to bring dessert. Not that she can’t cook other things wonderfully, but just…read on and you’ll see).

Beth and Will, my cousin, run Bigtips Candy, too, as well as some other cool ventures, and Beth has written not one but two books about sweets and chocolate, and she’s involved with the American Museum of Candy, which will open in 2011, in New Jersey.

And then yesterday: Martha. There was Beth, showing Martha how to make caramels. Not your run-of-the-mill Kraft caramels, oh no.

Caramels.  Goat butter and honey caramels with just a flick of sea salt across the top.

I would sell my children for a panful.

But because I recognize that children-for-candy bartering is illegal in the continental US, I will content myself with trying to make these caramels on my own, following Beth’s recipe to the letter. Because last month, at a family dinner?  She brought these for dessert and I only got one because I was too slow to the dessert table (very unlike me. I must have been coming down with something).

So should you call me in the next few days and I don’t answer the phone, it’s not that I’m not home. It’s just that my mouth will be full of caramel. Because I’m going to make an entire panful and I don’t plan to share.