DIY Kitchen: Salted caramel sauce.
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Halfway through winter, most people aren’t thinking about ice cream. But this nostalgic treat can tempt children and adults alike all year long, especially when homemade toppings enter the mix.
Growing up, our fridge always contained a jar of Mrs. Richardson’s butterscotch caramel. It was delicious warm streaming down a scoop of vanilla ice cream and just as good cold on a spoon eaten straight from the jar.
Looking through my cookbook collection, I was tempted by a homemade salted caramel sauce from “Modern Sauces” by Martha Holmberg (Chronicle Books, 2012, $35).
I’ve had this book for a few years but had yet to test out any of the recipes.
That changed on a frigid Saturday afternoon when my sweet tooth was ravenous and I had all day to experiment in the kitchen.
Biggest surprise: How easy it was. I’ve made homemade caramels for a Christmastime treat for many years, and it’s quite a laborious process.
There’s all the equipment to bring out, testing the candy thermometer, and baby-sitting the mixture for 45-plus minutes.
Homemade caramel sauce is nothing like that.
It took about 15 minutes from start to finish, and there was no candy thermometer involved.
Critical steps: Not letting the caramel mixture get too dark. Once you stir sugar and a nominal amount of water together, you let everything boil away (without stirring) for 10 minutes.
Because this was my first time making caramel sauce, I wasn’t entirely sure how long to let it boil.
The color changed quickly, from a light caramel color to a deep amber in about 40 seconds.
Thank goodness, I pulled it when I did. My sauce had a wonderful caramel flavor, but it was dangerously close to burning.
Next time, I’ll pull it when it becomes a medium-amber color to see how that affects the flavor.
Comparison to its commercial counterpart: If you’ve ever made homemade caramels at home, this tastes like the liquid version of that.
In comparison, the store-bought stuff tastes a little artificial.
And it’s no surprise why. The ingredient list of my favorite storebought caramel sauce contains corn syrup, sweetened condensed milk, water, butter, salt, disodium phosphate, artificial flavor, propylene glycol, pectin and potassium sorbate.
Yes, there are things I recognize, but a lot of stuff I don’t.
My homemade version contains only sugar, water, cream, salt, butter and vanilla extract. Is it worth it? Yes. Home cooks will love this recipe. It’s easy, tasty and cheap.
A jar of my homemade stuff was about half the price of the storebought version.
I will definitely be making this again.
Other notes: This caramel lasts covered in the fridge for 3 weeks. You can also freeze it for up to 2 months.