This caramel sauce is what dreams are made of—rich, silky smooth, and made with only 4 ingredients, it’s the perfect addition to ice cream, frosting, brownies, or just to eat on its own!

Fall is finally here (one of my all time favorite seasons) and I’ve decided to kick off fall baking with a classic salted caramel sauce!

Caramel is so versatile, and this is my go to recipe. It can be used for so many things, from filling cakes and tarts, drizzling on top of ice cream or brownies, adding it to buttercream, or just eating it on its own!

Ingredients for Caramel Sauce

Though caramel sounds tricky, it has relatively few ingredients—for this recipe, you’ll only need 4 things:

Granulated sugar. Sugar is the primary ingredient for any kind of caramel, since caramel itself is just cooked and caramelized sugar.
Butter. Butter adds a richness and softness to caramel.
Heavy Cream. Cream serves to enrich caramel as well as thin the sauce.
Salt. Anything sweet is best balanced with a good dose of salt.
Vanilla (optional). I personally like vanilla extract in my caramel, since it enhances its flavor, but it’s not necessary!

How to Make Caramel

Though it seems simple, caramel can be tricky at times. But once you know its habits, you’ll be well on your way for perfect caramel sauce every time!

Melt the sugar. This is one of the more daunting steps whenever people think of making caramel, since sugar has a tendency to crystallize and harden. If you take it slow and steady without stirring too much, you’ll be golden! Don’t worry if there are a few clumps of sugar that haven’t melted—they should go away after a few minutes.
Add the butter and cream. Be careful during this step, since the hot caramel will react with the cold butter and cream and sputter.
Add the vanilla and salt. These are some simple flavor enhancers that will boost the depth of your caramel. Once they’re added, you’re done!

Caramel Troubleshooting

Why did my sugar crystallize? There are several reasons (many of them scientific and hard to explain, even to myself). One of the primary causes of hardened sugar is if the caramel is being agitated too much, so try not to stir it a lot. To fix crystallized sugar, in my experience, I find that waiting for it to melt (and maybe adding a bit of water), may help to smooth things over. If not, it’s probably best to start over.
Why did my caramel separate? Once again, there are countless reasons, but here are the biggest: you’ve simply not stirred enough, you’ve added too much butter, or the caramel cooled down too fast when the butter was added. To fix a split caramel, keep stirring and try adding a tablespoon of water while the pan is on the stove.
How to fix a caramel sauce that is too thick? Gently reheat the caramel and add cream 1 tablespoon at a time!
How do I clean my saucepan? Caramel is notoriously tricky to clean, since it leaves sticky and hardened bits of caramel on your saucepan. My expert tip: fill the pan around 3/4 of the way with water, then put it back on the stove and stir! The boiling water will dissolve the sugar and clean your pan in a much easier way.