Monday 6 October 2014

Salted Caramel Sauce

Easy-peasy, salty-sweet, super delicious salted caramel sauce. Heaven!



After another week of mediocre and failed bakes it's safe to say I have been disheartened and just fed up. I just couldn't see how I could keep this blog going and keep up with developing and posting recipes when my oven is so damned crap. It just seems to destroy anything that goes into it! I have seen 3 batches of cookies go into the bin along with 2 batches of choux pastry and NEARLY a whole Victoria sponge.

But persistence is key, my friend! I have just had to sit and watch my cakes like a hawk turning them round every 5 minutes or so so they don't burn on one side and have had to ditch the baking tray for cookies - resulting in some very odd shapes indeed! And this weekend I had a successful batch of cookies (successful is an understatement - they were heaven), chocolate cupcakes and vanilla cake. Hooray! 

I made this salted caramel sauce to use for some Twix cupcakes and for the salted caramel stuffed cookies that I will be posting shortly. I swear they were the best cookies I have ever eaten. Ever. The whole batch was gone in an hour. But enough about these cookies. I felt that this salted caramel sauce deserved a post all of it's own, especially seeing as I think it will feature in several of my upcoming recipes. I may be obsessed...  I just think sweet and salty is hands down the best combination of flavours. So here is an easy step by step picture guide to make your own caramel sauce, so easy you'll never want to buy it again!

Ingredients:

200g granulated sugar
100g salted butter, cut into equal sized chunks
120ml double cream
2 tsp vanilla extract
Salt, to taste - add as much as you want for the flavour you want


Firstly, pour all of the sugar into a medium saucepan and cook over a medium heat. Stir constantly with a rubber spatula to prevent sticking to the bottom and burning. After about 3 minutes, the sugar will start to form clumps and resemble the picture below. Keep stirring!


Once the sugar has melted and turned an amber colour (similar to below) add the butter. Make sure it is cut into fairly similar sized blocks rather than one big blob to ensure that it melts evenly and doesn't burn. Keep stirring until the butter completely melts and is bubbling away.


Once the butter and sugar mixture looks like the picture below and is thick and bubbly, gently pour in the cream. It will excite the mixture and become quite volatile so be careful it doesn't spit at you and burn you. It hurts!! Continue stirring until it is all combined.



Let the mixture bubble and boil for a minute or so then remove from the heat. Stir in 1 tsp of salt to begin and vanilla and taste (not when it's too hot!). Add more salt if you wish. Leave to cool slightly and pour into a jar or container to store in the fridge. Reheat when you want to use it!




This is the simplest, 5-ingredient way to get the most beautiful caramel sauce ever. I hope this has been useful, you will need to refer back to this post to make the stuffed cookies. Which you will definitely want to make, trust me!!




4 comments:

  1. Great post! Can't wait to try some of these out x

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    1. thanks :) wait for my cookie post thursday and use the caramel for that, delicious!! x

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  2. Girl, I feel your pain. I've had the same kind of week in the kitchen...ironically enough, mine also involved caramel, but I managed to burn that too! Glad that we both kept our heads up and pulled through it!

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    1. Such a bloody nightmare!! Fingers crossed it's only up from here haha!

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