Recipe: Homemade Salted Caramel
Want to take your desserts to the next level in 10 minutes? Add homemade salted caramel! It's pure liquid gold, and is so so addictive. One spoonful and you'll find yourself sneaking to the fridge for more.
What I love about making my own salted caramel is that it has just 4 ingredients and it only takes 10 minutes to make. Admittedly the first batch I ever made was an absolute fail. I was so mesmerised by the sugar melting that it quickly burned right in front of my eyes. But I felt grateful for that mistake because it gave me the skills to know when I need to take the sugar off the heat and add the butter. I am going to share all my tips and tricks below so this doesn't happen to you. Ok, let's get started!
Ingredients
1 cup of white sugar
100g salted butter. If you only have unsalted butter at home, that's totally ok. You may just want to add more salt later on.
1/2 cup thick pouring cream
Flaky sea salt
Equipment
Non-stick saucepan, using a normal metal saucepan can burn your sugar really quickly
Wooden spoon
Whisk or fork
Method
In a medium sized non-stick saucepan, add your sugar to a medium heat. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon and make sure you scrap all of the sugar off the bottom of the saucepan. The sugar takes a few minutes to start melting but you will notice it forming clumps. This is good! Keep stirring. Gradually the sugar will melt into a light brown to a golden coloured liquid as the sugar dissolves. Don't take it too far otherwise it will burn.
As soon as the sugar is a golden coloured liquid, take it off the heat and add the butter slowly - don't add the butter all at once. The liquid will bubble rapidly when you add the cold butter (assuming you've taken the butter straight from your fridge) so be careful. Stir the butter in until it has completely melted through.
You may notice some small clumps of sugar in the mixture, and that's totally ok. Don't worry about it at all.
Very slowly, drizzle the cream into the mixture while stirring the entire time. As with the butter, when you add the cream slowly, the mixture will bubble rapidly.
Return the saucepan to a medium heat, and let it boil for 1 minute. The mixture will rise in the pan and that's what you're looking for.
Remove from the heat and add a pinch of flaky sea salt. Season to your personal taste.
Serve straight away or wait until it cools down. When the salted caramel is cooled down, it actually gets thicker.
Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 month. Serve straight from the fridge, or warm the caramel in the microwave or on the stove.
