Caramel Sauce (with Salted Caramel Option)
A rich, silky caramel sauce made with just 4 ingredients. Enjoy it as is or make the salted caramel version. Perfect for topping ice cream, apple crisp, apple pie, or swirling into baked goods.*Quick Note Before You Dive In: This recipe card covers the basics, but if you want help with properly setting your caramel etc, then scroll back up! Everything you need for foolproof results, is in the post.
Ingredients
- 1 ⅓ cups 267g granulated sugar
- ½ cup unsalted butter room temperature
- ½ cup heavy cream room temperature
- Big pinch of salt
Instructions
- Place the sugar into a 2-quart saucepan set over medium-low heat. Using a wooden spoon, stir continuously until the sugar resembles the texture of course sand and starts to turn an even light golden color.
- Continue stirring. The sugar will start to feel heavy and begin to clump together to form larger, even shaped clumps that will start to become molten.
- Continue stirring until the sugar has melted (it should be a light amber color). You may find you need to brush the sides of the saucepan with a wet pastry brush to avoid any burning sugar on the sides of your saucepan.
- Continue cooking and stirring the melted sugar until it reaches a medium amber color, remove the saucepan from the heat and whisk in the butter until combined.
- Carefully add the heavy cream (you don’t want any burning hot caramel splashing on you) and whisk until combined. Stir in the pinch of salt.
- Return the saucepan to a medium heat setting and allow the mixture to bubble for 1 or 2 minutes or until an instant-read thermometer registers 220°F.
- Remove the pot from the heat and allow it to cool slightly before pouring it into a heatproof container.
To make salted caramel:
- Replace the unsalted butter for the same quantity of salted (you won’t need to add the pinch of salt).
Notes:
To make salted caramel, you can either use salted butter in place of unsalted or if you ony have unsalted butter, add 1 teaspoon of salt (instead of a pinch of salt) when adding the heavy cream to the melted sugar mixture.
Use room temperature butter and cream for best results. Adding cold ingredients straight from the fridge can cause the hot sugar to splatter, while room temperature ingredients blend in more safely.
When beginning to melt the sugar, remove any chunks of sugar that are larger than a quarter, or try breaking them up with the back of the spoon (as they may not dissolve completely).
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