Salted Caramel Sauce

Lucious, creamy, salty-sweet caramel sauce - a perfect compliment to nearly any dessert.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword caramel, sauce, sea salt, vanilla

Cook Time 20

Servings ounces

Calories 175kcal

Equipment

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measuring spoons
sauce pan 3 quart or larger
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.candy thermometer
glass jars

Ingredients

17 ounce sugar
8 ounce water
1 tablespoon light corn syrup optional
1 ¼ teaspoon sea salt make sure the only ingredient is "sea salt"
16 ounce heavy cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Put sugar, water, salt and corn syrup in a heavy bottomed medium to large sauce pan. Stir to combine.
Heat over medium heat with out stirring until the caramel turns a deep amber color. Swirl the pan occasionally to ensure even caramelization.
Lower the heat and carefully add the cream.
Stir continuously until mixture has smoothed out.
Insert a candy thermometer and continue cooking the caramel sauce until it reaches 225° F (107° C)
Stir in the vanilla extract until fully combined.
Pour caramel sauce into a heatproof container(s) (glass canning jars are excellent for this) to cool until just warm before using. Store remainder in the refrigerator, warm in the microwave before use.

Notes

This is a very large batch of caramel sauce, it will yield just over 20 ounces total. That is about 20 servings. Caramel sauce will keep for a very long time in the refrigerator and I love having it on hand to add to recipes or drizzle over just about anything (fruit, cakes, ice cream, various breakfast foods!)

A note on the optional corn syrup: Corn syrup interferes with the formation of crystals. This is a caramel sauce, intended to stay in a liquid state rather then setting up into a creamy chewy candy, so there is very little risk of crystals forming. But, if you'd like to take out just a little bit of insurance, feel free to add the corn syrup.

Note on flavors: this caramel sauce is absolutely delicious as is, but it can be fun to experiment with other flavors.

I like to replace the water with apple cider and stir in a teaspoon of cinnamon at the end to make apple cider caramel
You can add 1 - 2 teaspoons of espresso powder to the heavy cream and make a coffee caramel
Allow the caramel to cool to about 110° F, then stir in 1 cup (180g) of the chocolate of your choice to make a chocolate caramel

Nutrition