Homemade Salted Caramel Sauce

This is the BEST homemade salted caramel sauce that’s so easy to make and delicious on alllllll of the desserts. Making caramel at home can be a daunting and intimidating task, but I’ve included all of my best tips and tricks along with process images of each step to make sure you nail it!

Ingredients

Homemade salted caramel sauce only requires a few ingredients to make, most of which you probably already have in your pantry. This recipe makes 3 cups of caramel sauce, but if you don’t need that much, it can easily be halved.

• Sugar. The main character in this story. I just use the regular ole granulated kind.
• Light Corn Syrup. Not all caramel sauce recipes will call for corn syrup, but I like to use it in mine. It makes this recipe to be fool-proof by helping to ensure the sugar doesn’t crystallize and also keeps the sauce at that pourable consistency.
• Water. This is another thing that not all caramel recipes use, but I find it helps make sure the sugar doesn’t crystallize while it caramelizes.
• Heavy Cream. Make sure that your heavy cream is at room temperature. You will be adding it to very hot caramel, and making sure it isn’t cold will help it to smoothly incorporate into the caramel.
• Butter. I grab the Salted Kerry Gold. It adds the most delicious buttery flavor to the caramel sauce.
• Salt. You can’t have salted caramel sauce without salt. Grab the sea salt for this. Iodized table salt will cause the sauce to be too salty. If all you have is table salt, reduce the amount to 1/4 tsp.

How to Make Homemade Salted Caramel Sauce

Grab a saucepan that’s larger than you think you will need. Measure out all of the ingredients and have them ready to go before you start. When you add the heavy cream to the caramelized sugar, it will bubble up A LOT, so you don’t want it to bubble over if you use too small of a pan. I like to use a medium sized stainless steel sauce pan like this one.

Add the sugar, water, and corn syrup to the pan. Give it a stir so that all of the sugar gets wet. Place the pan over medium heat. You don’t want to rush it by having it on too high heat. Let the mixture come to a boil, then cover it for 3 minutes. This will create steam and cause any sugar that is stuck to the sides of the pan to fall back into the pan and prevent it from crystallizing.

After 3 minutes, remove the lid and continue to let the sugar caramelize. You don’t need to stir it. Just keep your eye on it and carefully swirl the pan around occasionally. Try not to let the caramel come up the sides of the pan. You want it to all stay together in the bottom. Let it cook until it reaches a dark amber color as pictured below. You can absolutely do it by eye, but if you want to use a candy thermometer to ensure it’s at the right stage, go for it. The caramel needs to reach between 360-365 degrees F.

Once the caramel reaches that dark amber color, remove it from the heat for 30 seconds before adding the cream. We want it to cool just slightly. After 30 seconds, grab the cream and a long handled rubber spatula or wooden spoon. Begin to stir the caramel, then slowly pour in the cream while continuing to stir. It will steam and bubble up so be EXTRA careful. If it starts to clump up, don’t panic! Just continue to stir until it’s smooth.

Once smooth, stir in the butter and sea salt. Then, pour into a heat safe glass container (like a mason jar) and allow to cool. The salted caramel sauce will be quite thin when hot, but will thicken as it cools. Keep the caramel in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 weeks! It will thicken up quite a bit in the fridge, but just pop it in the microwave for 5-10 seconds to loosen it back up when ready to use.

How to use Homemade Salted Caramel Sauce

You can use this sea salt caramel sauce in SO many ways! Stir it into frosting or brownie batter. Pour it over ice cream. Drip it down the sides of a layer cake. Drizzle it on cheesecake. Eat it straight off a spoon! Here are some of my favorite recipes using this homemade salted caramel sauce –

• Caramel Pretzel Pumpkin Cheesecake
• Salted Caramel Banana Snack Cake
• Caramel Apple Gooey Butter Cake
• Caramel Crunch Banana Bread
• Salted Caramel Pumpkin Ice Cream

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