Mastering the art of consistently perfect salted caramel

Bold Bakers, one of my signature Bold Baking basics is my salted caramel sauce. I use it for everything. It is so popular on BiggerBolderBaking.com, it has 200 five-star reviews. It is foolproof, it is absolutely delicious, and it's so versatile. I'm gonna show you how to make it. So here in a heavy bottomed saucepan, I'm going to add in my granulated sugar, also known as caster sugar. Granulated sugar or kind of like coffee sugar in America is very fine and similar to caster sugar. So that's why I use that in baking. Now we're going to add in a little bit of water and that's going to help dissolve that sugar. Then turn the heat on to a medium low. We want a controlled heat. And we're going to let that sugar dissolve just by itself. So now if you're new to caramel making, I'm going to tell you some key caramel tips that will give you perfect caramel every single time. So here's what you can do at this point, before the mixture starts to bubble, you can stir the sugar. Once it bubbles, there is no more stirring. And just be careful not to stir too much sugar up the sides of the pot because once the caramel is cooking that Something that can actually crystallize, fall back in and crack your caramel. So here's what we want to do, we want to be patient, we want to let this sugar dissolve fully before it starts to simmer. If your mixture starts to simmer and not all your sugar is dissolved, that can also crystallize your caramel, you have to start from scratch and it's a bit of a pain. So I mentioned I'm using a heavy bottom saucepan and these are really fantastic for caramel because they kind of buy you extra insurance. Use your like best quality heavy pan, it just makes caramel making so much easier, protects the bottom from like cooking too fast, from like cooking unevenly, things like that. A good stainless steel pot is what I like to use. Once your mixture kind of goes translucent, there you go, look at my spatula you can see that the sugar has dissolved and now it can start to simmer so I'm going to turn up that heat just a little bit, just a smidge. And we are going to let this simmer away and form our caramel. Now at this point, no more stirring, okay, no spatulas, no spoons, no nothing in there. And if you want to move the caramel around the pot, feel free to swirl it by the handle. And what you want here is a controlled simmer, we do not want boiling, we don't want to boil a caramel, we simmer. So I would say keep that heat at a steady temperature, don't turn it up and down. And it will just steadily bubble away there. From when it starts to simmer, it does take around 10 minutes or so. During this time, it creates the caramel, it will start to change color, you'll start to see it go a deeper and deeper amber, and then once it starts to get kind of towards dark, it will actually happen pretty fast. So when it comes to caramel making, please always stand by the pot, never walk away and leave a pan unattended, it can be very dangerous. And if you have kids and they want to make caramel, please do it with them. Okay so come here to me, there actually is crystallized sugar around my pan, now that's very common, so do not worry, there's two things you can do. You can get a pastry brush that is dipped in some water and you can just brush it and dissolve that sugar and it'll disappear straight away. Just like that. Or you can do what I normally do which is nothing. Just leave it there. Don't worry too much about it. If it's really thick it can fall back into your caramel. That is a very thin layer so I'm not worried about it. So it's been simmering for around like maybe six or seven minutes as you can see it's starting to turn a very light amber color. If you want to kind of let it cook evenly, swirl the pan around just like this, carefully Using the handle. Now from this moment it will get darker and darker and that will happen quite quickly. So I mentioned that this is one of my basics recipes and what those are are kind of like the fundamentals of cooking and baking. So the ingredients that you might need to make something else like the sauce or accompaniment to help you know make another dessert. So for instance I show you how to make homemade buttermilk with just two ingredients, buttercream, how to make your own butter, yogurt, sour cream, ricotta, cream cheese, homemade food dyes, all natural homemade extracts, So many fantastic recipes that. These really are the building blocks for baking so definitely go to my website BiggerBolderBaking.com and check those out. Ok so now this is perfect timing. It has gotten a nice rich amber color, do you see the way there's a little bit of smoke? Now a little bit of smoke is ok, do not worry about a little bit of smoke. That actually adds more flavor. The deeper this caramel gets the more flavor it's going to have and that's exactly what we want. Now I don't want it too smoky and I don't want it too dark. So now I'm going to stop the cooking by adding in the butter. I'm gonna whisk that in, now it will seize up a little bit just like the way you're seeing it's doing here so stand back, have a long handed whisk, and whisk it at a safe distance. Once that dies down we're going to add in our heavy cream. And again, there will be bubbles, so stand back. Now you will feel it seize up here and get clumpy so keep on whisking until it's nice and smooth. There we go. Now I've turned off the flame and I'm going to remove it from the heat. And then last but not least we're going to add in the salt. We always add in the salt when it's off the flame otherwise the flavor can almost be a bit too strong. So this is ready to go right now and you can use it in so many different ways. I use it in my two ingredient no machine ice cream when you can add it in to make a variety of different flavors of ice cream. I also like to add it into my Starbucks caramel frappuccino. You know, who doesn't love one of those homemade? As you know I'm a huge brownie fan and I did make a salted caramel brownie to highlight that lovely sauce with the deep rich chocolate. If you like something a little bit lighter you can try my caramel apple upside down cake and rather than making a caramel on the stove top you just put the sauce in the pan, the fruit on top, the cake and then bake. It's all in one and it's really easy, perfect for fall. But personally, my guilty pleasure is after a long day of work, I scooped some creamy vanilla ice cream and I pour the sauce on top. It's like an extra decadent treat. Feel free to use this sauce in any way you like and get creative with your desserts. The best thing is it lasts for around four months refrigerated. And bonus, you can even give it as a gift around the holiday season. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any upcoming videos and I'll see you back here again really soon.