Caramel is such a wonderfully sweet, rich, complex, and comforting flavor. It smells so good, too. It is not merely a sweet treat but also gives a soothing effect during bad days. There are ready-made ones you can buy from the store but I found that making my own tastes so much better and actually a bit cheaper. So I am going to share with you a recipe on how to make caramel sauce at home and what we used it for. This is just the easiest because it is a dump-and-stir kind of recipe that you will never go wrong with. Read more.

I think love is caramel. Sweet and fragant; always welcome. It is the gentle golden colour of a setting harvest sun; the warmth of a squeezed embrace; the easy melting of two souls into one and a taste that lingers even when everything else has melted away. Once tasted it is never forgotten.

Jenny Colgan

Recipe: How to Make Caramel Sauce

Last month, I made baked cheesecake for the first time and topped it with blueberry preserve. Achi Shawna liked the blueberries but little Shane didn’t. She found it a bit sour for her taste so she opted to eat the cheesecake by itself.

Last week, a friend requested me to bake the same for him. But I felt that the top was too plain without any toppings. So I decided to make the caramel sauce and use it to smother the top.

I did my online search for some recipes and learned that they used heavy cream, which I didn’t. What I had in the pantry is the all-purpose cream and condensed milk hybrid that is now common in the Philippine market. It is called by many names, but I think the most generic would be sweetened creamer, which comes in a can. Since people like to mix all-purpose cream and condensed milk for their salads, so the manufacturers probably thought it would be good to combine the two and market it as a 2-in-1 product.

• Related: Creamy Peach Mango Ice Box Cake Recipe with Brojas

Tools Needed

I have read of some complicated processes that required a thermometer but I don’t have the patience for that. Instead, I used a non-stick saucepan with ceramic coating (any saucepan will do) and a silicone whisk. This is basically a dump, heat, and stir kind of recipe.

It actually gave me a really good result so I am sharing with you my recent discovery: how to make caramel sauce. It’s so simple that you might want to have a bottle on stand-by in the refrigerator, for you know, those days you want an extra sweet treat.

Cooking Time: Approximately 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter (I used the salted kind)
• 1/2 brown sugar
• 370 ml can of sweetened creamer
• 1/4 tsp. rock salt
• 1 Tbsp. vanilla

Procedure:

• 1. Place all the ingredients in the saucepan and turn on the heat to low. Start whisking.

• 2. After about 3 minutes, everything will be dissolved.

• 3. Continue whisking and bring to a boil (about 3-5 minutes).

• 4. Let it cool in the pan for at least 30 minutes in the pan before pouring into a glass jar. Allow it to cool completely and refrigerate for about 1 hour before using.

• Related: How to Make the Basic Crepe + Banana Crepes Recipe

How to Appreciate Your Caramel Sauce

This caramel sauce appears watery when hot. But cooling it in the refrigerator will cause the butter to solidify a bit and cause the sauce to thicken. There’s no need to add flour for thickener.

You don’t have to wait for the sauce to cool completely before transferring it into a glass jar so that it can still be easily poured out. With a spatula, Shane scraped the remnants in the saucepan so that she can lick the spatula to enjoy.

Caramel sauce is so versatile and so enjoyable that you could use it with your favorite desserts and snacks. You can top it on vanilla ice cream, use it as a dip for your favorite fruits like bananas or apples, or even use it as a sandwich spread. Some people prefer to use this as a sweetener for their coffee or tea because it becomes more flavorful and aromatic than just regular sugar.

In our case, we used it as a top layer for our baked cheesecake. When the cheesecake was shared, we also smothered each slice with more caramel sauce and it was simply divine. Our daughters loved it! Shane commented that it tastes so much better than store-bought.

And just like my pork sisig, I think that restaurants will have a hard time coming up to the flavor standards that I have set at home. Yeah, it’s kind of hard to order food because they will always compare it to my cooking.

So make your desserts and snacks more special with this caramel sauce. Your family will surely enjoy this!

• Read: Combi Recipes for Fun Snacks: It’s a Small Fun World After All