Recipe: Caramel Sauce Recipe

salted caramel sauce-1What is caramel?  Most people create bizarre concoctions of ingredients to create caramel when in reality caramel is simply burnt(browned) sugar.  All you need to do is…
Caramel Recipe

  • 2 cups of granulated white sugar
  • 4 tablespoons of corn syrup (e.g. Karo light syrup)  (optional)
  • ½ cup of water.
  • ¾ cup of Cream*

[[[ Disclaimer – This is as easy as a recipe gets, but don’t do this without a thermometer, and don’t walk away during the cooking process if you value your pots.  Also make sure you make this in a pot that is twice the size you think you need.  The last thing you want is 300+ degree molten sugar all over your counters, let’s keep things IN the pot.  🙂  ]]]
What is caramel?  Most people create bizarre concoctions of ingredients to create caramel when in reality caramel is simply burnt(browned) sugar.  All you need to do is to bring sugar up to 350 degrees and you will have molten sugar that is ready to turn into either brittle (think peanut or cashew brittle) or caramel.
Why include corn syrup?  This introduces a different kind of sugar which helps prevent crystallization.  The last thing you want is grainy caramel right?  Trust me – corn syrup is strictly optional, but makes the process much more idiot proof.
Steps:

  1. Add everything together (except for the cream) in a pot and stir together.
  2. Heat on medium and wait until it gets to 350 degrees.  During this process you will see the mixture start to boil and slowly start to turn tan and then brown.  (Warning:  Will quickly turn black and horrible if go beyond brown)
  3. At 350 degrees take off the heat immediately.  You can pour this mixture directly on a silicon mat with nuts on it for nut brittle, or you now carefully add the cream (it will immediately steam and seem angry – once it stops sputtering after a few seconds, stir until you get some very hot caramel.

* – For thicker caramel add less cream, thinner add more.  This is an easy recipe to experiment with, and the thickness cannot properly be judged until it cools.
-Mike Rothman