Ah salted caramel. Something I’d never heard of until a few years ago and now it’s on every menu. When it’s good it amazing, when it’s bad it’s still pretty tasty. Regular readers may remember me singing the praises of Eggless’s salted caramel sauce and I order it whenever I see it on the menu (if it’s vegan obviously) but I’ve never tried to make it myself. Why? Because my one attempt at making caramel went badly.

I used a recipe from the Australian cooking competition show My Kitchen Rules.

Ingredients:

220g (7 3/4 ounces) of Caster Sugar.

80ml (2 2/3 fluid ounces) of Water.

250ml (8 1/2 fluid ounces) of Thickened Cream. I used Rice Cream.

40g (1 3/8 ounces) of Vegan Margarine. I used Nuttalex.

1tsp of Salt. I used table salt which has a stronger flavor than rock or sea salt.

Method:

Stir Sugar and Water in a medium heavy based saucepan over medium heat, without boiling, until sugar dissolves.

Use a wet pastry brush to brush any stray grains on side of pan back down into mixture. I didn’t do this bit.

Bring to the boil.

Bring to a boil. Cook, uncovered, without stirring, until mixture turns a rich golden brown. This may take longer than you expect but keep an eye on it as it can turn very quickly. Mine didn’t heat evenly and I had one section go very dark and start to burn while the rest was still pale gold. Fortunately it didn’t effect the flavor.

Remove from the heat.

Add 1/3 of the Cream and whisk in (note to self buy a whisk). It will froth up. Any crystals and thicker caramel will reincorporate on the heat.

Return to the heat and add the remaining Cream, the Margarine and the Salt. Whisk it together then turn off the heat and cool to room temperature. It may seem a bit thin but don’t worry it thickens as it cools.

Verdict: Yummy. Just the right amount of salt. It took longer than I thought and that was annoying as I got quite impatient. Despite this it was quite simple to make. I will make it again and I might use coconut cream to see what it tastes like. Now I just have to decide what to use this for…