Caramel Sauce

Ah! Monday again so soon.  I hope you had a brilliant weekend - as I promised myself, I had a caramel cooking experiment, the results of which I bring you today. 

What I Used:

40g Dark Brown Sugar

40g Butter

100ml Double Cream

{These measurements will make up a good 1/2 pint pot of sauce, so change your quantities if only making up for a few apples, biscuits etc.}

There are a number of caramel recipes on the Internet, so if you have a favourite, by all means, use that [and do let me know what it is!], but after a few tries, I found this combination of quantities to work to my taste the best.  I also made my caramel in a glass bowl over simmering water - I just know every pan in the house would be ruined otherwise (!) and found this method to work just fine:

First, mix and melt the sugar and butter until dissolved and running smooth:

Once all of the butter has melted, you will notice the caramel colour really come through:

Now, add the cream and stir until fully blended:

...and I promise you, that's all there is to it.  SO much easier than I realised.
This caramel can be used as a sauce or dip, for millionaires shortbread, sponge puddings and as fillings for chocolates and biscuits or decoration - so many uses.  Pop the sauce in the fridge to set into a really thick sauce [which is so yummy to dip things in to].  I used mine to make some caramel apples:

I took my caramel off the heat and then allowed to cool a little as I wanted the caramel to be sticky and give a good covering of caramel on the apple.  Keep stirring intermittently until you are happy with the thickness and then cover your apple in the same way as the chocolate apples were covered:

Leave to set on a covered baking tray/surface.

As the caramel alone wasn't messy enough for me, I then used Caramel writing pens from Sainsburys to add a bit more decoration - it's pretty hard to make this look neat, so you may as well go for it!

Leigh from Laughing Latte [best blog title ever!] agreed that the marriage of chocolate apples and caramel apples could only be amazing - and it is.  It tastes even better than you imagine it would!

I covered the apple in caramel and then half in chocolate - try it [and let me know if you do!]