Brown Butter Muscovado Caramel

Liquid gold 🍯

As you probably already know, I am a fan of brown butter, I’m also a fan of muscovado sugar and caramel so why the hell wouldn’t I combine them all to make liquid gold. The lovely nuttiness of brown butter with the sweet stickiness of salted caramel results in a caramel with an amazing depth of flavour and an almost buttered popcorn-like taste. Incidentally this is exactly how I imagine the flavour of butter beer in Harry Potter, perhaps I should experiment with making it into some kind of fizzy drink.

Because of the brown butter the texture isn’t quite as smooth as some other caramels but we can forgive it because it’s an absolute favour bomb 💣.

Brown Butter Muscovado Caramel

200g caster sugar

50g muscovado sugar

250g double cream

100g butter (80g brown butter)

5g salt

Brown Butter Muscovado Caramel

• Start by browning the butter, if you want to know morer about brown butter, click here.

• Heat the cream either in a pan or the microwave, it needs to be just below boiling. If you have an old, empty vanilla pod hanging around, chuck it in, if you don’t, don’t worry!

• To make the caramel add a small amount of caster sugar to a pan, just enough to cover the base of the pan, put on a medium-high heat and heat until all of the sugar crystals have melted and its started to turn golden brown, add a little more caster sugar and heat until it’s all dissolved and there are no lumps.

• Continue this process until all of the caster sugar has been added.

• Once all of the caster sugar is in cook the caramel until it’s a rich amber colour and it’s starting to smoke, this is where all the caramel flavour is coming from so make sure it’s nice and dark, don’t be afraid to turn the heat down if you’re worried about burning it!

• Add the muscovado sugar, it will bubble a bit, don’t worry. Cook until the muscovado sugar has completely dissolved. At this point I like to switch to a whisk to help break up any lumps.

• Remove from the heat and add the warm cream whilst whisking continuously, it will boil loads and create a tonne of steam so watch your hands. whisk vigorously until the cream is fully incorporated and there aren’t any lumps.

• Add the salt and the brown butter, leave to cool.

• Use as you please!

Variations & Suggested Uses

As always I encourage you to experiment and adapt recipes to suit your own personal preferences, here are some adaptation I sometimes make to this caramel:

• Infuse the cream with a cinnamon stick, this is especially lovely at Christmas!

• Replace the muscovado sugar with light brown sugar for a more traditional caramel flavour.

• Use as a filling in cakes, I use it in my sticky toffee cake.

• Use it to fill truffles.

• Pour it over vanilla ice cream (my fave).