Caramel Recipe (For Caramel Apples or Candy)

This caramel recipe makes great caramel, better than the caramel that you buy in the store and is way easier than unwrapping a million little caramel squares. This is an easy caramel recipe.

Yield: Enough caramel for about 15 good-sized apples.

1 lb brown sugar (see baker’s note)
1 cup (two sticks) butter
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon butterscotch flavor

Care needs to be taken to assure that there are no sugar crystals in your candy as you make it. A few sugar crystals will cause the entire batch to crystallize. The following instructions will help avoid crystallization.

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan. Add the sweetened condensed milk and syrup. When the mixture is hot, add the sugar and salt and stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar is dissolved.
Wash the sides of the pan down with a soft spatula dipped in water until there is none of the mixture on the sides of the pan. This is to ensure that all of the sugar crystals are washed into the pan and dissolved. Check to make sure that there are no remaining sugar crystals by rubbing a little of the mixture between your thumb and forefinger. You should feel no gritty sugar.
With no sugar crystals in your pan, turn up the heat and cook the mixture while shirring until the candy reaches 245-250 degrees as registered on a candy thermometer. Remove it from the heat and store in the flavor.
Immediately pour out the caramel into a glass or metal bowl. Allow the caramel to cool to 190 degrees for dipping apples.

Baker’s note: One pound of brown sugar is equal to 2 1/3 cups of moderately compressed brown sugar.

Caramel Recipe Variations

You can make your caramel with a variety of flavors. This one is made with butterscotch because it’s our favorite. However, you can use any “warm” flavor—a flavor that complements caramel. (Fruit flavors such as strawberry or blueberry do not go well with the richness of caramel.)

Consider any of the following:

We particularly liked banana, coconut, and caramel.

To reduce the richness of the caramel, we used granulated (white) sugar with some of these flavors. If you use granulated sugar, use 2 1/2 cups.