Doughnuts and Caramel Sauce

Missy, here. And I had a craving last week. For caramel (pronounced car'-muhl in my world). :) So I started digging through my saved recipes in my Food Network recipe box and found this one for Salted Caramel Sauce (click here). The recipe came from Kelsey Nixon of Kelsey's Essentials. I followed the recipe pretty closely, except for another of my kitchen FAILS, which, frankly, I'm getting tired of! :) But I'll be brave and share my embarrassment once again here on the blog.

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

3/4 cup heavy cream

3 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter (I only had salted)

1 teaspoon gray sea salt, crushed or kosher salt (I only used a pinch of pink Himalayan salt

 and it was plenty salty)

Combine sugar and water and stir over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves.

Increase the heat to medium-high and DO NOT stir. Allow it to boil.

Allow it to boil for 5-6 minutes until it turns amber colored. I could also smell when it was about done. Do not let it turn too dark or it'll be burned!

This looked and smelled perfect.

Remove from the heat. Have your other ingredients ready. On another blog I happened to read yesterday, I found out your cream and butter should be at room temp. So be sure to pull it out ahead of time.

Whisk in the cream. And here's where I messed up. I started pouring the cream and whisking, then stopped a moment to grab the camera to show you the foaming. Um… do not stop whisking! Not for any reason, not even the blog because...

…if you stop mid-whisk, it seizes up on you. Lovely. (big sigh)

Soooo… I finished adding the cream and figured I now needed to somehow rescue my car-muhl. I decided to put it back on the heat (turned down to medium) to re-dissolve the sugar.

It worked! Then I removed it from the heat, added the butter  and salt and whisked that as well.

Once everything is stirred in, put it in a bowl to cool.

And for pure happiness, serve over vanilla ice cream. :) This recipe definitely makes a sauce, not thick caramel. It's pourable and spoonable. But it's nice for serving on top of something.

Speaking of caramel… I took my middle son to the Atlanta Symphony this past Saturday night, and after dropping him off at the dorm, I decided I needed a snack before heading home. I was thrilled to see Sublime Doughnuts was open! He had tried to take me there on multiple occasions but it had always been closed. Check out their menu (click here). Oh my goodness. These doughnuts (which I'd seen featured on TV not long back) were amazing. My son's favorite is the Fresh Strawberry N Cream, which I tried (while driving home, so no photo!). It was truly outstanding. I also bought the Dulche le Leche and Yin Yang Twist.

Pictured below are the Reece's Peanut Butter Cup and the Butter Toffee. Oh my goodness. If you ever get near one of these stores, be sure to go in and try one or a dozen. :)

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