Salted Caramel Sauce

For the past couple of weeks I’ve had a craving for salted caramel sauce. I’ve been a little hesitant to just simply make it because of my unfamiliarity with the induction stove-top in our new house. True, we’ve been here for almost 3 months now, you’d think I’d have it worked out! But I don’t. And I don’t want to burn a bunch of sugar in the new Scanpan pans that my husband bought me (yes, we had to replace our pans because our old ones were incompatible with the induction stove!).

As I was leafing through the latest issue of delicious. magazine, I noticed a couple of recipes from Nigella Lawson; one of them was for salted caramel sauce. If you didn’t know already, Nigella has this obsession with salted caramel sauce. Well, anyway, this recipe was super easy and didn’t even require cooking white sugar until it turns golden.

With ingredients that you probably have in your pantry already, you can be enjoying this lovely salted caramel sauce in no time at all. Grab some brown sugar, white sugar and golden syrup and melt them along with salted butter in a saucepan. Simmer the mixture for a few minutes and it will turn darker. Add thickened cream and good quality sea salt flakes, cook for another minute. Then enjoy.

It is perfect over ice cream. This is what my bowl of ice cream looked like when I poured the sauce over straight from the saucepan. It melted the ice cream into a beautiful gooey mess! Brilliant!

But it also tasted fantastic straight from the refrigerator when poured over ice cream. The sauce is thicker when chilled, of course, but it is still pourable.

I hate to admit it, but I also indulged myself by making French toast with roasted bananas and pouring a drizzle of the salted caramel sauce on top. Now that was a treat and a half! I didn’t get a picture of that one, but I did snap a photo of the second treat I made with the sauce. I had some leftover dark chocolate shortcrust pastry from a tart I was making, so I cut some rounds out of it, baked the rounds and used them in this ice cream sandwich stack, drizzled with salted caramel sauce. It was really yummy!

I know some of you might be a little bit hesitant to cook with sugar and if so, this simple recipe is for you. It’s basically fool-proof, and sinfully delicious!

Nigella gives you the option in her recipe of using 1/2 – 1 1/2 teaspoons of sea salt flakes. Nigella stated that she goes for the full 1 1/2 teaspoons, but I used a slightly rounded 1/2 teaspoon and found that that was plenty for my taste (might keep it at just 1/2 teaspoon next time).

Salted Caramel Sauce
Adapted from Nigella Lawson and delicious. magazine, March 2012
Makes around 1 cup

Ingredients
75g good quality salted butter
50g brown sugar
50g caster sugar
50g golden syrup
1/2 cup (125ml) thickened cream
1/2-1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt flakes
vanilla ice cream, to serve

Method
Melt the butter, sugars and golden syrup in a small, heavy-based saucepan over medium-low heat and simmer, swirling the pan occasionally, for 3 minutes. The sauce should turn from gold to dark amber as it cooks. Carefully add cream and 1/2 teaspoon salt and swirl again.

Give it a stir with a wooden spoon and taste to see if you wnat more salt, then cook for a further 1 minute. Pour into a jug and serve with ice cream.