From Scratch: Caramel.

I can't. believe. i made. caramel. it was such a great experience. and it tastes so wonderful! i was so nervous because it's so easy to mess up the process. you could add the heavy cream too early and end up with nasty sugar or you could scorch your sugar. and i honestly did mess up the first time because the heat was too high even though it was on low-medium heat, which made my caramel smell burnt :[ but i couldn't give up because i neeeed this caramel sauce (i'll tell you why later shh!) so i tried again...

and voilà!!

so this is all you need to do!

Ingredients

saucepan

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup butter

heavy whipping cream

chop your butter up

and dump it into your saucepan...

as well as your sugar. then place your saucepan on low heat. no stirring at all! stirring will cause the sugar to clump up and you'll have to start again!

the butter is melting!! don't stir...even though i was so tempted to...

if you leave it alone for a little bit for about 8 or 10 minutes it'll get a little darker.

you can stir a little bit at this point. just move the sugars at the bottom around a little bit...

there's still some light parts, as you can see, especially on the right side of the pan, which means there's still sugar there that hasn't really caramelized yet. and if you add the heavy cream at this point, then the sugar will turn hard and grainy.

at this point, where the color is kind of a dark amber all around, it should be safe to add the heavy cream. i didn't take any pictures of putting in the heavy cream because it started sizzling and bubbling everywhere and my poor camera wouldn't be able to handle that...but! theseasonedcook shows you a whole video of him doing this process, as well as putting in the heavy cream!

the amount of cream you put in depends on how thin you want your sauce...and when you mix it you'll know how you want it. you just need to make sure you put in enough to where it's smooth and sauce-y..

now pour it through a sieve into a pan!