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This foolproof homemade Caramel Sauce is made with just 5 ingredients and ready in minutes. No candy thermometer required, either! Drizzle it on ice cream, bread pudding, pound cake, and everything else.
Recipe ingredients:
Ingredient notes:
- Butter. You can use either salted or unsalted butter depending on what you have or prefer.
- Brown sugar. The key in this easy recipe! You skip right over the often tricky candy-making part by melting the moist brown sugar and butter together.
Step-by-step instructions:
- To start, melt the butter and brown sugar in a saucepan over medium heat until boiling. Stir gently to make sure the brown sugar melts.
- Once the mixture boils, just remove it from the heat and quickly whisk in the evaporated milk, salt, and vanilla. Taste it and see if you want to add more salt, if that’s your thing!
Recipe tips:
- Salted caramel: Add more salt to taste for your very own salted caramel sauce (start with ¼ teaspoon salt and add more to taste, a little bit at a time).
- The sauce thickens as it cools: Pour it into a glass jar or another easily-accessible container and cover tightly! In the fridge, it thickens up even more. It can get gritty when eaten cold straight out of the jar but reheats beautifully.
- Candy coating: This is not the right caramel for dipping apples or making candies.
- Make ahead: Refrigerate for up to two weeks, then microwave or reheat over low heat on the stove.
- Freezing and reheating: Stored in an airtight container, caramel sauce keeps for up to 3 months in the freezer. Thaw it overnight in the refrigerator before reheating gently on the stove.
Put your caramel sauce to work:
More sweet sauces:
Did you enjoy this recipe? Leave a comment and rating below!
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Caramel Sauce
This foolproof homemade Caramel Sauce is made with just 5 ingredients and ready in minutes. No candy thermometer required, either! Yield: About 2 cups.
Ingredients
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/2 cup evaporated milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon salt (see note 1)
Instructions
- In a saucepan over medium heat, melt brown sugar and butter together. Bring to a boil and remove from heat.
- Whisk in evaporated milk, vanilla, and salt. Use immediately or store covered in the refrigerator for one month. Yield: About 2 cups.
Notes
- Salted caramel: Add more salt to taste for your very own salted caramel sauce (start with ¼ teaspoon salt and add more to taste, a little bit at a time).
- The sauce thickens as it cools: Pour it into a glass jar or another easily-accessible container and cover tightly! In the fridge, it thickens up even more. It can get gritty when eaten cold straight out of the jar but reheats beautifully.
- Candy coating: This is not the right caramel for dipping apples or making candies.
- Make ahead: Refrigerate for up to two weeks, then microwave or reheat over low heat on the stove.
- Freezing and reheating: Stored in an airtight container, caramel sauce keeps for up to 3 months in the freezer. Thaw it overnight in the refrigerator before reheating gently on the stove.
Nutrition
Serving: 0.25cupCalories: 230kcalCarbohydrates: 29gProtein: 1gFat: 13gSaturated Fat: 3gCholesterol: 5mgSodium: 231mgPotassium: 91mgSugar: 28gVitamin A: 546IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 69mgIron: 1mg
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Meggan Hill is a classically-trained chef and professional writer. Her meticulously-tested recipes and detailed tutorials bring confidence and success to home cooks everywhere. Meggan has been featured on NPR, HuffPost, FoxNews, LA Times, and more.
sound deliciuos!! is this thick enough & firm for filling macarons ? or what can I add to prevent it from oozing out ?
Hi Sarah, it would likely be too thin to stay inside a beautiful macaron but would be great to drizzle over the top. Take care! – Meggan
If need be, the pan can be pulled off heat and agitated (not stirred) once it starts to caramelize to distribute the color and the cooking. I had no problems doing that. Another thing is to turn the heat down a bit when it begins to thicken or even pull it off heat.
Make sure there are NO granules of sugar anywhere other than in the water. Otherwise, you’ll build Superman’s Crystal Ice Castle. I use an IR Gun to check the temperature. Actually, you could go by the amber color. I cooled mine too much before adding the cream and almost ended up with hard taffy. :-) Just plop it back on some heat and keep stirring. If you blow it, it’s a cup of sugar, some cream and a half cup water. Just wash up and start over.
I made this again to pour over an apple galette. So simple and tasty. Practically makes itself.
Thanks David, that sounds delicious! – Meggan
This is super easy and delicious. I made it for your bread pudding recipe.
I tried this twice, thinking I did something wrong the first time, but I removed this at exactly 350 F and it came out way too dark and burned. I had no issue with graininess … the finished product is nice and smooth, but it’s inedible. I’ll keep trying, because now I’m on a mission and want to know what I did wrong, but I’ve looked at other recipes, and the “take off the heat” temp seems about 10 degrees lower, which sounds more like what I thought should’ve happened.
You can add more water and recook it to take the graininess away. I’ve had this happen with other recipes and it doesn’t have to be a failure at all. I always wash down the sides of the container it is cooking in several times with a pastry brush and hot water. I like to do mine in the microwave. Give it a try and see if you can salvage it for at least an ice cream topping. Good Luck.
Works perfectly if you DO NOT stir the mixture as it cooks (google sucrose inversion). Long story short, if you agitate it during this phase, it crystallizes.
Add this to your favorite coffee and viola! Save yourself $4 bucks!
Thanks kid for another great post.
Thanks for your insights, Dave! I appreciate you and I’m glad the recipe worked for you. I’ll be taking some candy classes in culinary school some day so maybe I’ll know more about this kind of stuff. AND I still have to read Kenji’s Food Lab! Take care.
I have noticed that detail in other recipes to not stir. In this recipe I noticed a technique that I thought might have been a game changer, and that is adding the sugar into the center of the boiling water. But it didn’t. The recipe that melts sugar to amber color, stir in pads of butter, then cream seems fail proof for me so far. I still enjoy your blog. Thank you for your help on this.
One of my readers with a food science background is going to test this for us tomorrow. We’ll see what Dave can figure out. I also never cited my source on this recipe (correcting that now) but it’s an America’s Test Kitchen recipe. I will go look at the book again and see if I can find any other info. Thanks Tim.
There is nothing that saddens me more in cooking as when an amazing looking recipe disappoints. I have made this recipe twice now and have been disappointed twice. The flavor and smoothness is definately there, that is not in dispute, but when it cools and crystalizes its not appealing to have grainy caramel on ice cream or cakes. I know and am aware of the crystalization concepts in chocolate. But whenever I use this method for caramel (water and sugar) it turns out the same. Not my favorite and won’t make it again unless someone can explain where its failing. Sadly, it discredits the website as well. And this is one of my favorite sites. Sorry Meggan.
Hi Tim, I’m sorry to hear that’s happening to you. Unfortunately I lack the scientific food background to have any idea why your caramel sauce is crystalizing when cooled – this has never happened to me. It sounds like you probably know more than I do. I’ll ask one of my pastry chef friends and see if she has any ideas, but I’m sorry again for the bad experience. I completely understand if you can’t come back to the blog. I’ll comment again if I learn anything. Best of luck.
Hi David, just looking online quick I saw something about stirring. It’s important that you don’t stir the caramel as it’s cooking as that causes crystals to grow, and to continue to grow, as it cools. It sounds like you probably know more about this stuff than I do, but I just thought I’d mention it. If you are stirring the caramel, that might cause the graininess. Good luck.
YES YES YES YES. I love caramel. I love salt. I love salted caramel. Therefore, I love this recipe. :-)