18 August 2006

Caramel Sauce


I love all things sweet, with the exception of a few. Some sticky toffee is all the way down there with sickeningly sweet marzipan. Marzipan may make wedding cakes look smooth, polished and elegant, but they certainly contribute little to the taste. If I can have things my way (and of course I hope I will), I will have a marzipan-less wedding cake next time in favour of a big stack of beautifully frosted cupcakes.

Anyway, back to the topic - Toffee. It may taste pretty good but I can certainly do without having toffee wrapped around my molars by the end of each piece. Those bits are impossible to remove but will slowly melt away, of course only after they've set up the foundations of a toothache. I definitely love my food easy to handle, requiring as little jaw work as possible. Of course, all this is based on what limited experience I've had with toffee. For all I know, there's this miracle toffee that will not leave me with such a bad after-feel.

So take away the 'sticky' from the toffee and you get something like caramel sauce. The flavours are definitely all there. The sugar, butter, with addition of cream, creates something sublime and so adaptable to a variety of ice cream flavours. While caramel sauces can vary in consistency, I love mine opaque and thick. Almost verging on toffee, but not quite there.

Jill Norman's The Cook's Book (yeah, I keep using the same few cookbooks) has a chapter by Pierre Herme, which includes a recipe for a caramel sauce. However, it requires some liquid glucose that helps prevent crystallisation and therefore lumpy caramel sauce. Since I had none on hand, I referred to Damien Pignolet's French and used his proportion of sugar to water.

But his was for a thin sauce, so I carried on from there with Pierre's butter and softly whipped cream. Just for kicks, I also added a pinch of vanilla salt that I got from Rome. This helps cut through the super sweetness of most caramel sauces, without impacting the palate explicitly. Really wonderful. In the photo, I served the sauce with some chocolate sorbet also taken from Pierre. While one was rich and thick, the other was refreshing with a very clean flavour.

Vanilla Salted Caramel Sauce
Makes 200ml

Ingredients
300g white sugar
100ml water
a pinch of vanilla salt
16g unsalted butter
160ml softly whipped cream

Method
In a small saucepan over low heat, dissolve the sugar in the water, ensuring that sugar is fully dissolved before the water boils.
Cook the syrup until the temperature reaches 170 degrees celcius or is a lovely amber colour, then dissolve the salt in it.
Add butter and cream to pan away from heat and whisk in. (There should be quite a reaction upon addition)
Place the pan back over low heat and bring gnetly to the boil (103 degrees celcius).
Allow caramel to cool before serving.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Liquid glucose can be gotten fairly cheap from Sia Huat :)

Anonymous said...

Hi donald,
I remember seeing some at Phoon Huat too. But I wonder if it will really help much. Have you tried?

Alpineberry Mary said...

That caramel sauce looks delicious. Great photo too.

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much. I hope you try the recipe one day and tell me how it went. =)

Anonymous said...

The caramel sauce looks fantastic, very nicely captured! Makes me want some ice cream dessert before I even had breakfast... ;)

Anonymous said...

Hi Nicky,
Thanks for the compliment. Your photos are way, way more gorgeous though.