Easy homemade caramel sauce makes simple desserts sensational
Is there anything as delicious and decadent as homemade caramel sauce? If you want to make a super-quick dessert seem like it took all day, drizzle a dollop of homemade caramel over ice cream, use it to jazz up a store-bought cheesecake, scoop it up with apple slices or pour it over a fudge brownie you baked from a box mix and sprinkle it with a few flakes of sea salt.
It takes any dessert from simple to sensational.
Best of all, it’s easy. Caramel contains five ingredients – sugar, butter, heavy cream, salt, and vanilla. You won’t even need a candy thermometer, although for best results, you’ll need a small, clean paint or pastry brush with bristles that won’t melt when they touch the sides of a hot pot. You’ll also need a whisk.
When working with sugar, the procedure isn’t difficult, but you do have to watch closely and follow the rules. Here are the rules.
Combine the sugar with a little water and stir over high heat until it comes to a boil and all the sugar dissolves. Once the mixture is clear and bubbling, do not stir any more, at all. Sugar crystals like to crystalize and will do so if given the chance, and stirring the mixture around as the water evaporates will result in sandy crystals in your mixture.
Once you stop stirring the mixture, turn the heat to medium high, so it continues boiling, but not wildly. If sandy white crystals start to form on the sides of your pot, use the brush, dipped in a cup of cold water, to gently wash the crystals away, letting the water drip from the brush and wash them back down into the boiling mixture.
Watch the mixture closely, and have a whisk, your butter and cream handy. When the sugar in the pot begins to turn a golden color, which will be roughly 10 minutes after it started boiling, don’t turn away. It will darken quickly to a pretty amber hue. At that point, add your butter and whisk. The mixture will foam up and become thick and fluffy before subsiding.
Boiling sugar is hot. HOT. Extremely, dangerously, very hot. Boiling water never gets over 212 degrees, but boiling sugar at the caramelizing point is about 340 degrees and gets hotter as it turns darker. It’s also sticky. Which is to say, do not spill or splash this stuff on your skin.
Note that some recipes call for the cook to put the dry sugar into a pan and cook it, stirring, until the sugar unevenly becomes caramelizes and forms clumps before finally melting into a dark amber liquid. We don’t recommend this method, because it’s very easy to burn the caramel or get it too dark before the lumps dissolve or wind up with gritty sauce. Using water and washing the sides of the pot ensures a nice smooth product and you have complete control over the color and bitterness level of your finished caramel.
After adding the butter, whisk in the cream and finish with a pinch of salt and a few drops of vanilla. If you like salted caramel, add a little more salt. If you use salted butter, which is fine, account for that salt. Feel free to play with other flavor essences besides vanilla also.
For roughly 1 ¼ cups of caramel, the proportions for a sauce that is thick yet pourable at room temperature is one cup of sugar, 6 tablespoons of butter, and ½ cup of cream. A quarter to a third of a cup of water is enough to melt the sugar. Salt and vanilla are optional and up to your taste. If you’d like caramel that is thicker, add a little less cream. It will also be thicker at refrigerator temperature, as butter solidifies in the refrigerator. It stores well, and can be jarred and stored for two weeks or more. Make sure the caramel is cool before packaging to store. See the recipe below.
Homemade Caramel Sauce
Makes 1 ¼ cup
INGREDIENTS
1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup water
¾ stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter
Pinch salt
A few drops of vanilla, to taste
DIRECTIONS
1. Place the sugar and water in a heavy-bottomed 2-quart or larger sauce pan and stir. Place over high heat and cook, stirring often, until sugar dissolves and mixture boils. Once mixture boils, stop stirring and lower heat to medium high.
2. Boil roughly 8-10 minutes, or until mixture begins to turn a golden color, without stirring. If crystals form on the sides of the pot, use a brush to wipe them away with cold water. Have your butter, cream, salt and vanilla ready. When the sugar turns a medium amber shade, remove it from the heat and whisk in the butter.
3. Whisk in the cream, and finish with the salt and vanilla. Sit the cream aside and permit to cool slightly. Use warm, or permit to cool to room temperature. The mixture will thicken as it cools.
4. To store, make sure the caramel is cool, then put inside an airtight container and keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Easy homemade caramel sauce recipe to make simple desserts spectacular
