Thing that is nowhere near as difficult as it looks

[which_chick]

You know what's not at all effing difficult? Those caramel sugar decorations for desserts. The hardened-drizzle things that stand up and look dramatic, those things. Not hard. Also not durable in an ambient-temperature east-coast August afternoon but should be fine in a low-humidity wintertime or somewhere with brutal air conditioning. But for me, stuck in the sauna of August, it is clear that, like peanut brittle, caramel sugar decorations are a seasonally appropriate food item.

But super easy. Some practice will help, but sugar is cheap and it doesn't take long to do.

Want dramatic looking toppers for your cupcakes? Super easy.

Fancy wedges of whatever to put on your cheesecake slices when served? Not any problem at all.

Get some sugar and a heavy saucepan and at least a spoon (though other props can be pretty fun, too). Get some parchment paper. Heat up the sugar to the color caramel you want, let it cool a little, and get to drizzling.

The decorations will firm up quickly and can be lifted off the parchment paper and used in fairly short order.

Seriously, give this a try, it is super easy.

Update: These are a hundred times better if you also ADD SOME SALT.

Comments

[crockpotcauldron]

Glad you're having a good time! Which shapes did you go for?
Meringue is also nowhere near as hard as people think. I've had a ton of success with them, and they keep really well in a jar so I can just trot them out any time there's a party where I need to bring something.
One of the failure states of meringue is, apparently, "weeping" which means "oozes a little bit of caramel sugar out the bottom" which I have no problem with. You can even coax bonus caramel out of them if you pipe the meringue directly on top of a nut.

[which_chick]

Oh, I just went for twirly loopy stuff, non-representational efforts. I'm doing it on parchment paper (for easy clean-up) and just faffing about.

I've only played meringue as topping on assorted summer pies (coconut cream, lemon meringue), so not up to speed on it as more of a cookie thing. Are they flavored or just plain?

[crockpotcauldron]

We add a splash of vanilla, but you can do whatever you like. It's the same recipe as the pie meringue, but you bake it at low heat (200F) for a long time (2-3 hours here in humid south Florida) to dehydrate it, so it comes out crunchy and ready to dissolve in your mouth instead of the bouncy texture of soft meringues.
Pipe em onto parchment paper, these things love to stick to the cookie tray and then shatter when you try to pry em off. Store them somewhere airtight or they get sticky.
The caramel twirls sound cute! I love it learning something low effort that looks fancy.