Salted Caramel

Today I'm preparing an insanely delicious and very versatile thing - caramel or caramel sauce. You can add it to cream to give it a caramel flavor, use it as a filling in a cake or muffins, add it to ice cream or pour it over popcorn, serve it as a sweet sauce for pancakes or just eat it with a spoon…

The recipe is not difficult, but has its own nuances, and, of course, you need to be extremely careful, hot caramel is a dangerous thing!

Sugar

250 g

Water

50 g

Butter

50 g

Cream 30-35%

250 ml

Sea salt

1 tsp

To prepare salted caramel, in a saucepan with a thick bottom (this is important!) pour water and then sprinkle sugar on top. Place it over medium heat and wait for the mixture to boil, do not stir. You can gently swing the saucepan from side to side.

When the sugar is completely dissolved, remove any sugar crystals from the sides with a brush soaked in hot water to avoid syrup crystallization.

Cook the syrup over medium heat until it reaches a rich dark amber color. If you have a kitchen thermometer, the syrup temperature should reach 180-190 degrees. It is important to cook the syrup well, as undercooked syrup will cause caramelization later on.

When the syrup is almost at the right temperature, you can heat the cream, but do not boil them, they should just be hot so that when added to the hot syrup, they do not react too vigorously due to temperature differences. By the way, you can also use a microwave for this step.

When the syrup reaches the desired temperature, remove it from the heat, add butter and mix well until fully dissolved. Add salt, mix well.

Then, while continuously stirring, add the hot cream in three parts, stirring vigorously each time. When the cream is combined with the syrup, it will still react and bubble vigorously, so be careful and attentive!

Return the saucepan to the stove and cook the syrup for another 3-4 minutes over medium heat. The caramel temperature should reach 106 degrees.

At first, the caramel will be very liquid, at this stage you can strain it through a fine sieve to remove any possible sugar crystals. But this is optional. When cooled, the caramel will thicken, becoming denser and more viscous.

If you want a thicker caramel, add less cream or cook the caramel longer.

Pour the salted caramel into a glass container, I used a 300-gram jar. The caramel should cool before closing it with a lid. Store the caramel in the refrigerator for about a month.

(5/5)