Salted Caramel Sauce

Salted caramel sauce is one of my weaknesses. I can’t resist anything that is salty and sweet. I recently got my hands on some vanilla bean sea salt, thanks to my friends at Jacobsen Salt and I knew that I needed to use it in some homemade salted caramel sauce.

I know salted caramel can be tricky but here are a couple tips and tricks that I do. First off, once the sugar and the water have been combined, no more stirring. Stirring causes crystals to form which will cause your caramel sauce to be chunky or even worse not cook properly. Also be very very careful with the hot sugar liquid. It is like molten lava. When you pour the cream into the hot sugar syrup be very careful. If it happens to overflow, let it, don't try and fix it - it won't end well, I know from personal experience. 

Also I know there are a couple different ways to make salted caramel, but this way is my personal favorite. Lastly, you can use any type of sea salt, but that vanilla sea salt is the bomb!

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Salted Caramel Sauce

• 1 1/2 cups sugar

• 1/2 cup water

• 3/4 cup cream

• 4 Tbs. butter

• 2 tsp. vanilla extract

• 1 tsp. sea salt

• Serve over ice cream or just straight from the jar.

In a medium sized pan, combine the sugar and water. Gently stir to combine. Add the pan to the stove top over medium heat. Cook without stirring the mixture for about 5 to 7 minutes or until the sugar mixture turns a dark amber color. Reduce heat to low. Carefully add the cream. Remove from heat. Add butter, vanilla and sea salt. Stir well to combine. Let caramel sauce cool before storing it in a jar or directly pouring it over ice cream.