There are different ways of making Caramel that will give you different types of caramel as well. You can either melt sugar in a pan, let it go nice and dark and dissolve the melted sugar with water – very hot and please be really careful if you try this method, when you add the water to the melted sugar, it will give you lots of bubbles. If you get some of this on your skin, it will burn badly.  Also, when it goes cold, it goes rock hard….. Not what we want right?

Alternatively, you can boil a can of condensed milk for 3 hours, ensuring it is covered with water at all times, and then leave that too cool completely.  And in the process, risk blowing up your kitchen…  so what other way can we make caramel, you ask?  Well, let me tell you:

Ingredients:

• 1 can of condensed milk – 170g/160ml condensed milk
• 6 tablespoons of sugar/ approx. 60g (I used light brown sugar)
• 60g of butter

From this…

To this….

Method:

First take a saucepan with higher sides in which you add your butter.  Let the butter melt on a medium high heat and stir.  Add the brown sugar and stir again, then add your condensed milk and stir again so you have a homogeneous mass.  Keep stirring this mass of butter, sugar and condensed milk till it boils and start thickening.  This can take up to 8 to 10 minutes on a medium heat, so don’t worry if you don’t see anything happen straight away!  Once thickened to your liking, take off the heat, place on a cool surface and keep stirring so your caramel sauce starts cooling down. This will also allow you to see how tick it will get once cooler.  Carefully stick the end of a spoon in the sauce and taste.  If you find the sauce not sweet enough, then dissolve a bit of sugar in some normal milk, and stir this into the caramel sauce.  Bring again to the boil whilst stirring till you achieve the sweetness you like.  And thats it 🙂  You just made caramel!

tip: if you like salted caramel, you can stir in salt to taste, at the end of the cooking process!