Sluttishly Easy: Caramel Sauce

Okay, a little caveat before we begin: it does indeed say "sluttishly easy" in the title of this post, and strictly speaking this is true. However, while it is sluttishly easy to get caramel sauce right, it can also be annoyingly easy to get it wrong.

The first time I made this I totally mucked it up by adding water to the sugar before heating it up. This has apparently worked wonders for various anonymous people (probably liars, let's face it) on the interwebs, but it did not work for me. Next time round I omitted the water and it all went smashingly. Let that be a lesson to you.

You need:

1 cup of caster sugar

1/2 cup butter (if you use salted butter it gives the sauce a nice sweet-salty kick)

1/2 cup cream

Make it:

Have all the ingredients ready to go. You really don't want to mess up the timing on this one.

Take a thick-bottomed saucepan and pour in the sugar. Put it on a low to medium heat on the stove until the sugar melts and turns golden in colour. Stir the sugar while it melts so it doesn't get stuck to the bottom of the pan and burn. (Also, just a little sidenote: melted sugar is H-O-T. Like, hotter than melted other things, and hotter than boiling water... probably. Be careful, and keep any pets or tiny humans out of the kitchen. Gosh, I feel so much like my mum right now. Apologies.)

As soon as the sugar starts to boil (there should be no crystals left), add the butter and keep stirring.

Once the butter has melted, take the saucepan off the heat.

Count to five, then slowly pour in the cream, stirring constantly. It will froth up - this is normal. Just make sure you use a deep enough pan that it doesn't overflow.

The mixture should be smooth and runny and, if you've done it right, absolutely delicious. Let it cool down a bit and serve it warm over apple pie or ice-cream or anything you feel needs some extra deliciousness.

Image courtesy of Little Blue Hen's flickr photostream.