Quick and easy shortcut 5-minute caramel sauce!
This is a quick and dirty post for 5-minute caramel sauce. I’ve used this caramel in a ton of recipes across the site, like my Caramel Macchiato , Apple Pie Sundae , and Salted Caramel Snickerdoodle Milkshake , and I will certainly use it in many more, so instead of re-typing the recipe every time, I thought I’d give it it’s own dedicated page.
Why is this recipe called shortcut 5-minute caramel? Because it uses brown sugar instead of the traditional white sugar (which technically makes it a butterscotch ) so it only takes 5 minutes to make.
To get the dark, amber color in caramel, you have to melt granulated white sugar, which isn’t all that hard but requires fairly careful watching and more time than I’m often willing to give to a quick dessert or my morning coffee.
By using brown sugar, you get the delicious caramel flavor and almost none of the work. You just throw the ingredients together and let it simmer away.
This shortcut version is perfect for serving over ice cream, whipping into buttercream frosting , or drizzling over whatever takes your fancy. It’s also quite good by the spoonful out of the jar, if you’re into that sort of thing… 😉
More Perfect Dessert Sauces
- 30-second Chocolate Sauce
- Hot Fudge Sauce
- Peanut Butter Sauce
- Nutella Sauce
- Strawberry Sauce
Ingredients
- ▢ 1/4 cup ( 2oz ) unsalted butter
- ▢ 1/2 cup ( 100g ) brown sugar
- ▢ 1/2 cup heavy cream
- ▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt*
- ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- In a small pot, over medium-high heat, combine cream, brown sugar, butter, and salt. Cook, whisking occasionally, until butter is melted and ingredients mixed.
- Bring to a low simmer, turn heat down to medium and continue to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring every minute or so.
- Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
Notes
Slightly Adapted From Smitten Kitchen
It’s our last day of 2015! You know what that means. It’s time to take a look back and reflect on the year we’ve lived. Did we accomplish all the goals we set for ourselves? Did we put more good into the world? Did we eat enough cookies?
My 2015 was pretty uneventful, but I spent it with people I love and people I like, and I definitely ate enough cookies, so I’m calling it a good year.
This is also the time of year for superlatives. And since Baking Mischief is a food blog, I’m sharing my culinary ones with with you.
Favorite…
Baking Mischief recipe: These Butterscotch Thumbprint Cookies . I love all the recipes on the site, but there’s an amazing sugar-covered, butterscotch-filled reason that this was the first recipe I ever posted.
Food I ate this year: A chocolate and dulce de leche churro I bought at Greenwich Market. Why are all churros not handed to you directly out of the grease and stuffed full of more sweet stuff?? The greatest kindness I ever have or will perform was eating only half so that everyone in my party could try a bite.
New recipe I tried: I made soooo many good ones this year, but in the end, I went with My Baking Adiction’s Café Mocha Cupcakes because her mocha buttercream is perfection in a piping bag and because they were just so damn cute. I sent them to a teacher breakfast and someone asked if they could buy 50 for a party that weekend.
Biggest…
Kitchen disaster: My exceptional clumsiness in 2015 . I broke a total of three Pyrex dishes, two bowls, at least one cup, and two or three plates this year. It was not a banner year for glass or ceramics in my kitchen.
Baking project: This year’s gingerbread house was close, but making more than 60 red velvet Iron Man cupcakes for a Marvel event at my dad’s comic shop was definitely the most stressful project I took on this year.
Most…
Used kitchen tool: My trusty kitchen scale . I love that thing. Interesting food I ate: Escargot sausage . It tasted like sausage. Valuable thing I learned: The weight of most standard baking staples . It makes cooking go so, so much faster, and people are so impressed when you can tell them the weight of half a cup of flour off the top of your head.
A couple non-cooking stats and the big one…
Most read book: Good Omens (x3) Favorite film: Mad Max: Fury Road Longest long run: 18 miles Most happy tears cried: The Parks and Rec series finale
My favorite moment of 2015 : I have three-way tie. Getting the chance to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet in London was an astonishing delight. I completed NaNoWriMo for the first time, finishing on day 15 with a 10k word sprint as the perfect writing-fueling storm raged outside. And, of course, the absolute terror and exhilaration of pressing “publish” on my first blog post here.
What about you, do you have any favorite/biggest/most moments of 2015 you’d like to share? I think it’s important to look back on the year’s bright spots, because let’s face it, 2015’s been hard on the world at large. Sometimes it can all feel too dark. Holding onto these little moments of joy and accomplishment help keep me hopeful going into the new year. Here’s to a kinder 2016.
Yesterday, I wrote about 2015 in review. Today, we’re looking ahead to 2016. New Year’s Day means New Year’s resolutions. And New Year’s resolutions mean dreams big and small. These are mine for the year:
In 2016…
- I resolve to remember that cooking is for pleasure and food is about fuel , not how it will look in photographs for my blog.
- I will learn to love cleaning as I cook .
- Mise en place will be a more consistent part of my 2016.
- My knives will be treated with as much respect as any other important relationship in my life .
- I will use less salt . This is probably a lie .
- An attempt will be made to cook more seafood , even though fish tastes fishy and crustaceans are the spiders of the ocean.
- I will finally make that beautiful fruit tart I talk about making every summer.
- More green , less tan.
- I will master the delicate art of filling a cupcake pan exactly 2/3’s of the way full.
- More family recipes will be written down , because w e’re going to want these some day .
And some personal ones: Create more, consume less, run faster, be kinder.
Do you make New Year’s resolutions? If so, what are some of yours?
Shortcut 5-Minute Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup ( 2oz ) unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup ( 100g ) brown sugar
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 teaspoon salt*
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- In a small pot, over medium-high heat, combine cream, brown sugar, butter, and salt. Cook, whisking occasionally, until butter is melted and ingredients mixed.
- Bring to a low simmer, turn heat down to medium and continue to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring every minute or so.
- Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
