Homemade Caramel Sauce

There’s nothing quite like a jar of homemade caramel sauce waiting in the fridge, it turns even the simplest dessert into something special. With just a few kitchen staples and a little patience, you can create a rich, silky caramel that tastes far better than anything store-bought. The deep golden colour, buttery aroma, and perfectly balanced sweetness make it a recipe you’ll want to keep on repeat.

This caramel sauce is also incredibly versatile, which is why it’s such a favourite. Drizzle it over ice cream, swirl it through brownies, spoon it onto pancakes, or use it to finish your favourite bakes. It even makes a beautiful homemade gift. Once you realise how easy it is to make your own caramel at home, you’ll wonder why you ever bought a jar.

Why You'll Love This Recipe!

• It’s incredibly easy — just a handful of simple ingredients come together in minutes for a flawless, restaurant-quality caramel.
• The flavour is unmatched — rich, buttery, deeply caramelised, and so much better than anything from a jar.
• It’s endlessly versatile — drizzle it over desserts, swirl it into drinks, or gift it in a cute jar for an instant holiday treats using basic kitchen ingredients.

Ingredients

• Granulated Sugar
• Butter - I've used soft, salted butter to create this recipe. You want to make sure your butter isn't cold when you add it to the hot sugar.
• Heavy Whipping Cream - let your cream sit out at room temperature before you add it to the hot sugar & butter mixture to stop it from separating.
• Salt - you can skip the salt if you want to, but I prefer this sauce with a little salt to cut through the sweetness.

How To Make Caramel Sauce at Home

Before you start, make sure that you have the butter, cream and salt measured out and placed close to where you are going to cook the sugar. This makes it much easier once you are making the caramel sauce.

Place the sugar into a medium sized saucepan and place over a medium heat. Allow the sugar to liquefy (this takes around 10 to 15 minutes depending on your stove top). During this process, you'll need to stir the sugar consistently to ensure it doesn't catch and burn. I use a whisk or spatula to do this. Be patient at this stage of the process!

Once the sugar has fully dissolved and is an amber color, remove from the heat and add the butter cubes. The sugar will froth up and seem like it's going to overflow - this is very normal. Whisk the butter continuously and vigorously until the mixture has completely emulsified together. It will look fairly thick and glossy at this stage.

Add the salt and continue to whisk. Then slowly add the cream while continuing to whisk. You can stop whisking once all the cream has been added and the sauce looks rich and glossy.

Transfer the homemade caramel sauce to a clean jar and place into the fridge to thicken up. Store this caramel sauce in the fridge for up to two weeks (if it even lasts that long, because I literally eat this straight from the jar!). You can also freeze this sauce once it's completely cool. It will last in the freezer for up to 3 months. Thaw in the refrigerator overnight.

Troubleshooting Tips

This homemade caramel sauce is quite simple, however, because of it's simplicity, quite a few things can go wrong ... and believe me while creating this recipe, I experienced every single one of these, hence why I can help you fix them!

Caramel sauce is bitter - this happens when you let the sugar burn before you add the butter and cream. Once the sugar has dissolved, remove it from the heat immediately, don't wait for it to get darker, as this is where it becomes bitter.

Caramel sauce is too runny - runny caramel sauce can occur when you add too much cream or you don't allow the sugar to get hot enough before you add the butter. You will find that your sauce thickens once you place it in the fridge, so don't worry too much about this.

Sauce separated when I added cream - something I experienced when creating this recipe is the butter and sugar mixture separating and becoming a big hard mass when the cream was added. To stop this from happening, I recommend letting your cream sit out for 30 minutes before you make this sauce and only add the cream a little at a time to ensure you don't shock the caramel with cold cream and basically turn it into a big caramel candy.

How To Use Caramel Sauce

You can literally use this homemade caramel sauce however you like, but here are some of the ways I use it in my kitchen:

• Caramel Lattes - you can use this delicious sauce to make the best caramel latte you've ever tasted!
• Pancakes and Waffles - drizzle this sauce over your sourdough discard pancakes and sourdough discard waffles.
• I love swirling it through my sourdough brownie batter before baking and drizzling it all over this sourdough banana bread.
• Use this to sweeten overnight oats or baked oatmeal (seriously a decadent breakfast treat).
• Or turn it into a dip at your next holiday gathering and serve with homemade sourdough graham crackers or these sourdough cinnamon sugar crackers.
• Gift a jar of this sauce with a loaf of fresh sourdough bread!

Share the sourdough love!