I was inspired to make Homemade Caramel Sauce when I seen Simply Ming a Chef on PBS and the Create channel, one Saturday morning. He had a guest on and they each cooked a meal. Ming cooked some fish and his guest cooked top sirloin steaks. Dessert was included, Chef Ming made some caramel sauce and topped it over real vanilla ice cream. He also toasted some sesame seeds and topped that over the ice cream as well.

Caramel is made by heating sugar until it melts into a thick, sticky liquid. Adding cream or butter (or both) to the sugar after it liquefies results in caramel sauce. Caramel syrup is simply pure caramel thinned with water. Caramel candies are made by reducing a mixture of sugar, cream, and butter.

The advantages of making your own homemade caramel sauce is store bought caramel sauce will always have added hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils and stabilizers. More than likely the sugar used is HFC or high fructose corn syrup.

The health benefits? I was thinking myself about this one. What benefits could caramel sauce have when it is almost 100% sugar. Will it does have a small benefit. By adding the cream, it has 6% of your daily need of Vitamin A. This vitamin plays a major role as an antioxidant against premature aging. Not much, but it is something. It also has 120 calories for every two tablespoons.

Step 1:

So what we need to start, is 1/2 cup of water and pour that into a large sauce pan. Using a large sauce pan is important. We will explain later on why. Put the pot over medium heat and fill a measuring cup with 1/2 cup of water and pour into the pan. The pan should be somewhat warm by the time you pour the water into the pan. Then add 1 cup of white sugar and stir with a whisk until the sugar has dissolved.

Step 2:

Once you notice air bubbles appearing as the water-sugar mixture heats up, take the handle and swiftly slide back and forth the sauce pan over the burner. Note I said swiftly, not forcefully. As you are doing this the mixture is somewhat clear in color, but will start to turn light brown. It is important to swiftly slide the pan over the burner, so the sugar water will not burn and have a burnt flavor.

Step 3:

Here is a brief 17 second video to demonstrate how to move sauce pan over burner. This is a brief segment from our video Spanish Flan.

Step 4:

When you start to get that amber color, slowly pour heavy whipping cream into the sauce pan. Pour slowly with one hand and using a whisk, stir with the other hand. This is were the use of a large pan comes in. As you pour the cold cream into the hot caramelized sugar, it will instantly boil faster, rising fast up and spilling over the pan. It could also splatter up onto your face and that could case first degree burns. So pour the cream slowly, so none of the fore mentioned will happen.

Pour cream slowly as in image one (1), whisking at the same time as in image two (2). Notice how it is boiling faster and raising up in the sauce pan as in image three (3). Please be cautious with this step in making caramel sauce.

Step 5:

Once you have pored the amount of cream needed, about 1 1/2 cups, it should start to look like this. A nice caramel color. While it is still hot, pour into a glass jar and set to cool

Step 6:

Now toast yourself about 4 or 5 tablespoons of sesame seeds in a warm pan. Do not over toast them.

Step 7:

Dish up some hard real vanilla ice cream. Top with the caramel sauce and top that with some sesame seeds.Enjoy your bowl of real vanilla ice cream with homemade caramel sauce and toasted sesame seeds. If you are interested in others dessert suggestions or some more fun ideas of turning recipes into food creations check out our website Savor the Food.

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