How Do You Make Homemade Caramel Sauce and Candy?

When I get a recipe in my head, there’s rarely anything else I can think about. I wanted my coffee. That was the whole situation. I’d made the iced coffee, I knew exactly how it was going to look with a caramel ring around the glass, and I did not want to wait around for a sauce to cool.

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So here’s how I made a caramel sauce and a caramel candy out of one pot, using what was in my kitchen. And yes, I eyeballed most of it, so I’m giving you what I actually did.

If you’ve been buying caramel sauce at the store, you know that I’m the one for ‘from scratch’ and ‘back to basic.’ Now if you’re spending money on it every time, consider making it yourself. It takes maybe ten minutes out of your day, sometimes a half hour, and you know exactly what goes in it. Sugar, butter, cream. And because I like to be a little extra (most times) I added vanilla (naturally). And the thing is, you can pronounce every single ingredient. That’s what my Pantry cookbook is about, and it’s what this blog has always been about: getting back to basics.

The one-pot trick

This is the part I love. You cook the sugar and butter until they liquefy and turn into caramel. At that point, before any cream goes in, you take some out and set it aside. It hardens into caramel candy. Then the rest of the pot gets the half and half and becomes your sauce. Two things from one pot, one batch of dishes.

That candy is what I chopped up and sprinkled on top of my iced coffee. The sauce is what’s swirled up the inside of the glass.

What each ingredient is doing in there

Butter gives the caramel its richness and rounds off the sharp edge of caramelized sugar, so you get a buttery, almost toasty flavor instead of just sweetness. Without it you’d have burnt sugar syrup. I use 3 tablespoons for this batch.

Half and half is what turns hot caramel into a sauce. It adds creaminess and thins the caramel enough that it pours. I didn’t have whipping cream (the 35%) or the 18% cream on hand, so I used half and half, and it worked beautifully. Because half and half is lighter, you need to keep an eye on the consistency, which I’ll explain below. Without any cream you don’t have a sauce, you have candy.

It’s steaming because my phone was recording so close that I was worried it might get water damaged. But I wanted you to be able to see the consistency from the image.

How to make it (what I actually did)

Add 1½ cups sugar and 3 tablespoons butter to a pot and heat them over medium heat until everything liquefies and caramelises. Once it does, take some of the caramel out and set it aside to harden. That’s your candy.

Now add the half and half to the rest. Be careful here. Hot caramel and cold cream will bubble up fast and spatter, so pour slowly and stand back. I added about ½ cup first, and it wasn’t the consistency I wanted. I wanted it thinner, so I added about 1 more tablespoon, and that was perfect for the pourable sauce I was aiming for. I wanted it saucy, not candied, so I could get that little caramel ring around my glass that you see on a $12 latte drink. If you want a thicker sauce, add less. Take it off the stove and pour it straight into a jar.

Adding the cream is what will give it that saucy texture, you’ll be looking for.

About waiting

Normally you’re supposed to let caramel sit about a half hour before using it. I didn’t wait, because I knew it would thicken up by then, and I’d have to heat it again. I used it right away, and that’s why it looks so pretty running down the glass in the video. If you’d rather make it ahead, expect it to thicken as it cools, and warm it gently to loosen it back up.

Can I use margarine?

Before anyone asks: yes, you can, and I’ve tested it. But you have to adjust the margarine, or you’ll end up with a lot of oil left over. Instead of 6 tablespoons of butter, you’d use about half, so 3 tablespoons. The leftover fat doesn’t go to waste, either. I pour it into a ramekin and save it for later, like for cinnamon buns. Candied margarine for cinnamon buns could be its own recipe. Stay tuned.

A note on amounts: in my butter version I used about 1.5 cups of sugar and 6 tablespoons of butter. The batch in the video, the one I’m sharing with you, was 1½ cups sugar and 5 tablespoons butter with a splash vanilla when everything‘s liquid. A typical caramel sauce is closer to 1 cup of sugar, 6 tablespoons of butter and ½ cup of heavy cream, so mine is sweeter and thinner. That’s how I like it.