Homemade Caramel Sauce Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How is caramel sauce made from scratch? ›

Combine brown sugar, butter, and milk in a saucepan and bring ingredients to a boil. Remove thickened mixture from heat before adding (optional) vanilla extract. Let the caramel cool slightly before using. The result is an impossibly rich sauce that is guaranteed to satisfy your sweet tooth.

Caramel sauce is a wonderful topping for ice cream, cake, pie, and bread pudding. While a typical caramel recipe calls for heavy cream, what if you don't have any handy? This easy recipe uses milk and butter instead, ingredients you're more likely to have on hand.

The main ingredient for making a caramel is sugar. A liquid caramel can be made using any quantity of sugar or water just as long as it follows the ratio of 2 parts sugar: 1 part water.

Swirl, don't stir: While slow, deliberate stirring will help the sugar dissolve evenly, you want to stop stirring once it has fully melted.

There are two basic methods of making caramel – wet and dry; the basic difference between the two methods being water. Essentially both methods are heating sugar, then adding fat (butter and cream, typically); but the wet uses water to dissolve the sugar faster.

Never leave your caramel sauce unattended: To make caramel sauce you essentially toast white sugar until it's melted, before adding in butter, cream, and salt. Your sugar can go from toasty to burnt pretty quickly though, so make sure you keep a close eye on it! Don't forget the salt!

This caramel is made by simply boiling the sweetened condensed milk for several hours in the can. As heat is applied, the sugar naturally caramelizes. Because the milk is boiled inside its can, there's no need to worry about it becoming too thick or scorched as the moisture cannot evaporate.

cooking it until it turns into the most delectable creamy caramel. If you've never cooked a can of Sweetened Condensed milk until it magically turns into caramel, you don't know what you've been missing.

You can use whole milk or opt for skim milk to help slash the calories and fat content of your recipe. This substitute is especially useful in cooking, but it may alter the texture of baked goods and will not whip as well as heavy cream.

The typical formula for caramels is C24H36O18 , so the elements of water have been removed from the sucrose.

What thickens homemade caramel? ›

To thicken a caramel sauce, use one tablespoon of cornstarch or tapioca starch (sometimes known as tapioca flour) and one tablespoon of water per cup of caramel. Then simmer the caramel, stirring it constantly with a wooden spoon until it becomes thick.

Caramel is white granulated sugar that's been heated slowly to 340 degrees Fahrenheit. This gradual heating process breaks down the sugar's molecules and creates a deep golden brown color and rich flavor.

To avoid burning the caramel, it's just a matter of being vigilant. The melted sugar should be cooked until it's a deep amber colour — it's done when it starts to smoke and begins to foam just a little bit. At this point, it should be removed from the heat immediately to stop the sugar from darkening any further.

Add more sugar to the sauce.

Most caramel sauces are made by caramelizing sugar and adding milk and a little salt. If you increase the amount of sugar in the recipe you'll end up with a thicker caramel. Try increasing the sugar by about 1/3.

Most believe caramel was created more than 1,020 years ago in 1000 AD by Arabs mixing sugar and water to create a crystallized liquid. Funny enough, the original caramel was not believed to be enjoyed as a sweet treat but rather used as a beauty product.

Ok you may not have known this but, ~newsflash~ caramel is literally just cooked sugar with a little bit of butter (for stability) and heavy cream (for flavor & mouthfeel) stirred in at the end. The longest (and “hardest”) part of making caramel is just toasting and melting down the sugar at the very beginning.