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Make my Easy Homemade Caramel Recipe, and you’ll never go back to store-bought again! Learn how to make caramel made with just a few simple ingredients – it’s creamy and perfect as a sauce or let it soft set for topping brownies or cake!
Learn How To Make Caramel
Once I learned how to make caramel sauce from scratch, I haven’t gone back to buying jars of it at the store.
- It’s actually easier to make thank you think – it’s practically foolproof!
- You only need five ingredients to make it!
- Once it’s done, it has the best soft texture. The one I’m sharing is without corn syrup and you still get that velvety soft-set caramel that everyone loves.
Important Ingredients Needed
- Sugar: a classic caramel uses granulated sugar
- Butter: have your unsalted butter sliced and ready to go before starting
- Heavy Whipping Cream: gives a nice richness to the caramel (no substitutions for this)
- Salt: you need to add salt even if making regular caramel. You can turn this into salted caramel by adding extra, but salt is necessary to make the caramel a delicious flavor.
How to Make Caramel from Scratch
- Add the sugar to a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. It will start to clump.
- As the sugar continues to heat the clumps will become liquid.
- Keep gently stirring with a wooden spoon until all of the lumps have dissolved and become a deep amber color.
- Once the sugar has dissolved, add the sliced butter and stir until it melts.
- When the butter has melted into the sugar, add half of the heavy cream, stir, and then add the rest. The mixture will bubble up when you add cream.
- Once the cream is mixed in, turn off the heat and add the vanilla and salt. Stir until the caramel sauce is smooth.
Expert Tips
- Making caramel sauce is not hard, but it does require your undivided attention. This isn’t the kind of recipe you can leave on the stove and go fold the laundry – make sure there aren’t any distractions when you get ready to make it.
- Gather and measure all of your ingredients first.
- This is a recipe that really benefits from high-quality butter, like Challenge or similar.
- You need salt even if you’re making regular (not salted) caramel. Otherwise your sauce will taste too sweet and flat.
- When you are melting the sugar, stir gently and be patient. The time it takes will depend on your pan and the kind of stove you have.
- Gentle stirring will prevent sugar crystals from splashing up on the sides of the pan. Avoiding this will keep your sauce from crystalizing, which is just a fancy way to say “turning grainy.” If you notice sugar gathering on the sides of the pan, use a pastry brush dipped in water to brush the sides and dissolve the sugar.
- Most important, don’t leave the sauce alone at any point turning the cooking process. There is a thin line between a perfect caramel sauce and a burnt one.
Storage
Store caramel in an airtight container (like a jar) in the refrigerator. It will harden as it cools, so reheat to thin to your desired consistency. At room temperature it will soft-set, making it perfect to use for caramel brownies or as a cake filling.
FAQs
No, you don’t need one for this recipe, you just need to cook the sugar until it’s liquid.
The key to getting the right soft-set texture is to use heavy whipping cream, which has a high milk fat content. Don’t substitute a lower fat cream, half and half, or milk otherwise, the caramel will not set properly.
Did you stir the sugar? It’s important to keep stirring as it melts, so it doesn’t burn. Also, you shouldn’t let it alone while the sugar is melting – it doesn’t take long for it to start burning.
If you remove it from the heat too soon before it’s thoroughly mixed, it could clump up. If this happens, just warm it up again and whisk it until smooth. If your sauce is grainy, it’s most likely because the sugar crystalized. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do about that.
Caramel is sticky so it’ll stick to the pot – for easy cleaning fill the pot with water after you’ve removed the caramel and let it soak. The sugar will dissolve making it much easier to clean.
Caramel Sauce Recipe
Recipe Video
Ingredients
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- 5 tablespoons (71g) unsalted butter sliced into tablespoons
- ⅔ cup (158ml) heavy whipping cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon salt or more to make salted caramel
Instructions
- Note: making caramel is something that needs your undivided attention. Make sure you have all your ingredients gathered before starting and that you are not distracted. Leaving the caramel alone at any point can cause it to burn.
- Place sugar in a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan. Make sure the sides of the pot come up a little bit (that it’s not a shallow pan) because it will boil up when you add the cream later.
- Place the pan over medium-low heat. Cook stirring often but being careful not to spread the sugar up the sides of the pan too much. The sugar will form clumps then melt into a light amber liquid. Keep stirring until the lumps have all become liquid. This will take about 7-12 minutes, depending on your pot and the heat of your stove. DO NOT LEAVE THE SUGAR ALONE, it will burn fast.
- As soon as the lumps are dissolved, add the butter and stir until it’s melted. Add half of the heavy whipping cream, stir, then add the rest. It will bubble up as you add it to the mixture. Turn off the heat and then stir in the vanilla and salt. Stir until smooth. At this point, add up to an additional 1/2 teaspoon salt (to taste) for salted caramel.
- Pour the caramel carefully into a jar and let cool to room temperature. It will thicken as it cools. Cover and store in the refrigerator. When ready to use, remove the lid and heat in 30 second increments until the caramel is melted and smooth and the desired consistency (about 60-90 seconds for the just-made texture). Will keep for 2 weeks in the refrigerator.
This was my first time making caramel ever and I followed all the directions on this recipe, and it turned out delicious, 10/10, I will def use this as my go to caramel recipe always. I halved the recipe too just to see it would turn out and was amazing