This isn't your grandma's caramel sauce recipe.
This post marks my 100th post on this little blog I started as a pet project to make sure I kept cooking when I left my food-based career to pursue a new career in software development.
One HUNDRED!
I thought I'd make something a little fun to celebrate: Cracked Pepper Salted Caramel Sauce. It's sweet, with the spicy bite of freshly cracked pepper. I totally gambled when I came up with this recipe, and I'm so glad it turned out to be a winner. The hot, gooey caramel would be awesome on a sweet bread, but I put mine on top of goat milk ice cream, and topped it with a few more turns of the grinder of black pepper.
I know, it sounds nuts... but I highly recommend you put cracked pepper on your ice cream and caramel! My recipe puts plenty of pepper into the actual sauce, where the sugar and cream in the caramel soften the spiciness. Topping it with a fresh topping of pepper creates this amazing, layered, complex pepper flavor that unexpectedly brings your ice cream to the next level.
Give it a try, and let me know what you think of it!
Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 5 Tablespoons butter sliced
- 1/2 cup cream
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
Instructions
- In a heavy bottomed, large pan with high sides set over medium heat: stir the sugar slowly but constantly until it melts into a liquid. It will get clumpy at one point, but just keep stirring until it becomes smooth and liquid.
- Add the butter, and stir until the butter is melted and combined with the sugar. Adding the butter will cause the sugar to bubble up ( hence why you need a large pan for this recipe ), so be prepared!
- Slowly stir in the cream, and remove from the heat as soon as all the cream has been added and mixed in with the butter/sugar mix.
- Stir in the salt and the black pepper.
- Serve over ice cream ( goat milk ice cream if you can find it! ), and top with more cracked black pepper.
Congratulations on your 100th post! I would have never thought to put pepper on sweets, but I would love to try it with this caramel sauce. Sounds great:D
This is ingenious --- I put pepper on everything --- well, this is a new one for me, but I put it on almost everything! I can't wait to give this a try...
Whoa yum. Totally acceptable to eat by the spoonful, right?
I mean, if something isn't good enough to eat with a spoon, why put it on something else?!
Woah, I never would have thought of this combination. It sounds awesome. I can't wait to give it a try. Thanks for the recipe! Congrats on your one hundredth recipe!
I really just thought, "What's the worst that can happen?" when I decided to pair the pepper with the caramel. I'm so glad ( and maybe a little lucky) that it turned out to be delicious! Thanks on the congratulations -- Only took me like five years, haha!
That sounds heavenly. My husband adores salted caramel, I bet he'd love this too.
Thank you! The cracked pepper adds this fabulous but subtle spiciness to it. Not a hot spicy, but almost an herbal quality. I'm totally obsessed.