Coffee Caramel Sauce

This sauce is sure to be a hit with anyone who loves coffee.  Drizzle it over ice cream or pancakes; stir it into milk; combine it with seltzer to make a coffee caramel soda… just to name a few uses.  Be creative, and let me know what other uses you discover for this sweet and tasty concoction.  It’s remarkably simple to make and requires very little supervision, so you can make it whilst (and at the same time as) you handle other chores.

Coffee Caramel Sauce yield: approximately 3 cups finished sauce

  • 2 cups strong coffee (2 Tbl grounds per 6 oz. water to brew)
  • 1 cup brown sugar, packed
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1 dash cardamom
  • 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

    Combine sugars, spices, and coffee in saucepan and set over medium-high heat to bring to a boil.

    Once the liquid comes to a boil, reduce heat to very low and let simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, stirring every 20 minutes or so with a clean wooden spoon to pull sugars from side of pan as liquid reduces (wash spoon between stirrings to help prevent shocking sugars into crystallization).  The acid in the coffee helps to stabilize the sugar and greatly reduces the chances of crystallization, but there’s no sense in tempting fate when it’s so easy to wash the spoon.

    Pull from the heat when the top starts to bubble in a very foamy manner, after the syrup has reduced by about half:

    Stir heavy cream into syrup (it must be heavy cream!  Using anything with a lower fat content will be inviting your dairy to curdle).

    Pour into glass container to cool.

    Once cooled, store refrigerated in glass container with tightly fitting lid (such as a jelly jar or a cleaned and re-used maple syrup bottle).

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