Homemade Butterscotch Sauce, a.k.a. Butterbeer Sauce

I decided I wanted to make butterscotch sauce the other day, because I’d never made it, and honestly, I’d never tasted it before, and I was all prepared to regale you with the glories of homemade butterscotch sauce until I saw the picture above and instead feel the need to point out that Harry Potter has appeared in my food, and I now have no choice but to call this ‘butterbeer sauce’, and pour it on sundaes and fresh green apples and call everything wizard food.

Seriously. Do you guys see him? In the spoon? Right int he middle. He’s there. I promise. Look:

SEE?! See it?!

It’s a sign. A sign that this is, in fact, Butterbeer Sauce and will henceforth and forevermore make all foods it encounters magical. The end.

You might be asking yourself what makes this butterscotch -beer sauce and not caramel. There’s one simple answer: brown sugar. And a little vanilla. And there’s the magic, of course. 😉

Step this way, wizards, witches, and muggles alike, and see just how easy it is to make butterscotchy butterbeer goodness.

When you start cooking the brown sugar and water together, the mixture goes through about four stages of bubbling. At first it will be mostly foamy, with a few larger bubbles. After just a couple of minutes, the foaminess subsides, and the mixture becomes predominately very large bubbles. This stage also lasts for just a couple of minutes. Next, the mixture settles down to a mixture of large and small bubbles. This stage lasts the longest, at around four minutes. During the last couple of minutes of cooking, the mixture cooks down to a thicker consistency, with more foaminess like the beginning stage.

You can also see in the images above a color change from the first image (top left) to the final image (bottom right). It’s a very slight change from a deep brown or amber to a deeper brown or amber. This isn’t as obvious of a change as when you make plain caramel sauce, which goes from clear to light amber, but it’s still important to note.

After stirring in the goodness that is heavy cream, butter, and vanilla, plus a dash of salt, you’re left with rich, smooth, amazingly irresistible butterscotch sauce.

Don’t be intimidated by homemade butterscotch (or caramel sauce). It seems scary, what with the boiling sugar and all, but it’s actually unbelievably easy, and definitely worth it! Plus, it takes less than fifteen minutes to throw together, so there’s no excuses about not having the time either. 😉

I hope you guys will give this a shot, drizzle it over some ice cream, throw on some magical star shaped sprinkles and call it a butterbeer sundae. 🙂

Enjoy!