April 14, 2011

Salted Vanilla Bean Caramel Sauce…from Love Big, Bake Often

Another day away at the Culinary Institute, another Guest Post!

Today you are meeting the lovely Tania from Love Big, Bake Often.. Tania is such a spunky little lady (you should see her cupcake tattoo!), and I think you’ll LOVE her recipe. I know I do!

Thanks Tania for sharing!

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Nothing like making your own….

The other day I was trying (desperately) to make new friends and we began talking about dinner. It seems that a common topic of discussion is dinner, what’s for dinner, where to go for dinner, recipe ideas etc. I am always looking for new ideas of what to make for dinner so that I don’t fall into that rut of having the same thing all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Taco Tuesday….but it is easy to get stuck into the routine of making the same recipes week after week. So during the conversation “J” mentioned perogies. I am a true lover of this Polish delight. I LOVE a good potato and cheese perogie, so I automatically asked for the recipe (Food Lover’s habit). Well, she looked at me like I had two heads. “Umm, no. I buy the frozen kind” she said and kind of made a face. Ok…..why was it such a shock that I would ask for the recipe. Is it so strange to be making things like that from scratch? I didn’t think so.

Now that I am starting (for quite a while now) to pay more attention to what is in our food, what my boys are ingesting, I am making more and more things from scratch. I have the time, so why not? I like knowing that the afterschool snacks have been made with good ingredients, and always include the most important ingredient of all….LOVE. I am proud to say that most of their snacks are homemade, all of their birthday cakes, and most of their dinners….I just don’t seem to be able to make the same kind of yummy organic corn dogs that they love! The one thing that they love that I make is homemade ICE CREAM. Jakob is excited to make some with me and add different ingredients to swirl into it, like at Cold Stone. And of course with ice cream comes chocolate and caramel sauce to go on top….

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Salted Vanilla Bean Caramel Sauce

(Makes about 1 Cup)

1 cup Sugar
3 tbsp Water
1 tbsp Light Corn Syrup
¾ cup Heavy Cream
1 tbsp Unsalted Butter
½ tbsp Vanilla Bean Sea Salt (from Beanilla)

Directions

Put the sugar, water and corn syrup in a medium saucepan and stir to combine. Heat over medium high heat, without stirring, until the caramel turns a deep amber, approx. 5 to 10 minutes. As the sugar is caramelizing, wipe down any splatters on the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in cold water. You want it to get a rich amber, if it is too pale it won’t have much taste.

Lower the heat, stand back from the saucepan, and add the cream and butter. When the splatters calm down stir too smooth and calm the caramel. Stir in the Vanilla Bean Sea Salt. Remove the pan from the heat.

Pour the caramel into a heatproof jar and let cool until it is slightly warm and still pourable before using.

Then pour this amazing caramel onto just about everything; ice cream, cake, pie, yogurt, seriously just about anything.

We like to use it to make ice cream sundaes….nothing like a homemade Chocolate Chip Cookie topped with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and drizzled with Salted Vanilla Bean Caramel Sauce. I made these cookies the other day and they are perfect for the base for this sundae.

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