How To Make Caramel Sauce

A jar of caramel sauce in your fridge is the gift that just keeps on giving. Drizzle it over ice cream or a slice of pie (or both), add a spoonful to your morning oatmeal, use it as a dip for slices of apple, stir it into cocoa — need I go on?

Caramel sauce is also a good first project if you’ve never worked with sugar before and are eager — if a bit nervous — to enter the world of candy-making. It’s a very forgiving sauce, and you don’t even need a thermometer. Here’s the scoop!

Caramel sauce is made by cooking sugar until it liquifies and cooks to a dark amber color, and then whisking in cream and butter. The caramelized sugar is what gives the sauce its flavor; the cream and butter are what turns it into a rich sauce. You don’t need to get fancy when buying ingredients — basic grocery store staples will do. This said, if you want to up your caramel game, spring for some fancy butter and good cream.

Before you even start cooking the sugar, make sure you’re using a big-enough pot. When you add the cream halfway through the process, the sugar mixture will bubble up, nearly tripling in volume. Make sure your pan holds at least 2 to 4 quarts to allow for this bubbling. If you’re not sure how big your pan is, just eyeball it when you add the sugar; if you have enough room in the pan for the sugar to bubble up to three times its volume, you’re golden.

It’s this stage of cooking the sugar that can feel the most intimidating and scary if you’re not familiar with it. First, mix the sugar with a little water; you don’t strictly need the water, but it helps control the process and slow it down a little. Once you’ve mixed the sugar and water, don’t stir the sugar again — stirring can make the finished sauce taste grainy.

With the pan over high heat, let the sugar come to a boil. First you’ll see little bubbles around the edge of the pan or in just a few spots. Then the whole surface will come to a boil and you’ll see the sugar go from opaque to clear. Next you’ll see streaks of yellow in the sugar, which will quickly darken to amber. When you see those darker, amber streaks, give the pan a gentle swirl to make sure everything is cooking evenly and there are no hot spots.

Keep cooking the caramel sauce as dark as you like — you don’t strictly need a thermometer here, but if you’d like to check, the caramel should be between 325°F and 350°F at this point. The longer and darker you cook the caramel, the deeper the flavor; conversely, the shorter and lighter you cook the caramel, the lighter and sweeter the flavor. If you see wisps of smoke, that means you’ve hit the upper limit on the temperature and are good to move on to the next step.

When you add the cream, first of all make sure it’s warm. I usually warm the cream in a pot on a back burner before I start cooking the sugar, but you could also warm it in the microwave. Cold cream straight from the fridge will cause the sugar to seize up. If you forgot to warm the cream and the sugar seizes, however, it’s not the end of the world; you’ll just need to be extra attentive to whisking out the lumps when you cook the sauce in the next step.

Also when you add the cream, be prepared for the whole mixture to bubble up. It happens very quickly and can make your heart skip a few beats, but it’s all part of the process. Just keep pouring in the cream while whisking the mixture and the bubbling will subside after a few minutes.

Once the bubbling has calmed down, whisk in the butter and get ready to cook the sauce.

The last step in making a caramel sauce is cooking it a little longer on the stove. This helps bring everything together and cook out some of the liquid, making your sauce thicker and creamier. Cook for five to 10 minutes or so — cook shorter for a thinner, more drizzle-worthy sauce, and longer for a thicker, gooier sauce. Also, know that the sauce will thicken up more as it cools, so stop cooking when the sauce is still a bit loose for your liking.

Let the sauce cool, then transfer it to a jar and stash it in the fridge for up to two weeks — or as long as you can manage to keep it around!