Feb 15, 2015

Homemade Caramel Sauce


It's so easy and delicious. Stir a tablespoon or two caramel sauce into hot coffee, drizzle some on top of your pancakes, muffins or ice cream,use as a dip for  fruits or drizzle over pies and cheesecakes. Its divine. There are two methods of making caramel sauce- wet and dry. In wet method, you melt the sugar with water in it. While in dry method you caramelize the sugar in the pan first and add the wet ingredients,
Some people are scared of making caramel sauce since it involves melting sugar. But you don't need to be if you are doing it right.


First of all, you don't need any fancy equipment. If you have a good old deep saucepan and a long wooden spoon you are all set. Its best to use a light colored pan(like steel or ceramic) but if you are like me it doesn't matter which pan you use. Secondly, caramel sauce is very forgiving when it comes to the ingredients. You can make a beautiful caramel sauce with white, brown sugar or with  both, with 10g butter or 100g butter, little or more cream, no vanilla or no salt at all. It all depends on what you want. If you are using white sugar and brown sugar, caramelize the white sugar first and add the brown sugar along with butter and cream. If you use very little fat or no fat at all, your caramel sauce will be brittle or hard.
According to Dan Leopard's article on The Guardian,  dark caramel goes well with light fruits like apple and oranges, golden caramel goes well with dark fruits like figs and medium colored caramel goes well with medium flavors like milk chocolate. But there are no set rules to this.

If you toast some nuts and add to this  it becomes praline or add a little sea salt to this and it becomes salted caramel sauce.

Lastly, by no means you should let your skin touch the sugar or the caramel sauce when its hot. The boiling point of sugar is so high that you don't wanna mess with this.

 Ingredients

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup cream
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp butter
A pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla essence 

Method 

Add sugar in a saucepan. Start with an even layer


Let it melt on a low heat. Do not stir with a a
 spoon, only SWIRL the pan. But if you are concerned if the sugar will get burnt (which is not likely to happen if you are doing this step on low heat) with the wooden spoon push the sugar at the edge to the center. The sugar clumps when you do this. So make sure that the sugar has completely melted before you go to the next step.


 After the sugar has melted (PAY ATTENTION) the color changes fast at this point. Stir well. Some say golden is divine, some say amber gold and the other say reddish brown but no one says black or burnt.



FYI --> If you are scared of hot molten sugar put your mittens on. Now turn the heat to medium high.
Add the brown sugar, butter and cream. Be very careful because it will sizzle and splutter. 




Add vanilla essence and salt.

Put off the heat and keep stirring and you end up getting this smooth and beautiful caramel sauce. 

 Allow it to cool

The difference between caramel sauce and toffee sauce is that toffee sauce is only cooked to the point that the sugar in it melts, at which point it becomes usable. Caramel sauce is cooked well beyond the melting stage, through all the various candy phases until the sugar molecules themselves start to break into pieces. It’s those pieces that give caramel its rich flavors and amber-brown color. Toffee sauce wouldn't have much of a color if it wasn't for the fact that it’s made with brown sugar


 To store, keep refrigerated in an air-tight container. To warm, place in the microwave for 30 seconds to heat through.

Happy Cooking!


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