Extra Rich Homemade Butterscotch Recipe.
Butterscotch sauce is a deliciously rich combination of butter, brown sugar, and cream that's ridiculously easy to make and lovely poured over pretty much anything. And everything.
I have a thing about dessert sauces. You might call it an obsession. In my defense, it's a limited obsession, in that I'm only obsessed if I have some on hand. Here's what happens...
I bake something requiring a dessert sauce. For example, Carrot Cake with Caramel Rum Sauce or Salted Caramel Cupcakes drizzled with Salted Caramel Sauce.
Or, Marble Chocolate Cheesecake with ribbons of Hot Fudge swirled into the batter.
Once the sauce is in my hot little hands, I start pouring it on everything. I'm not joking. I recently went through a Salted Caramel Sauce phase when practically everything edible in our kitchen was a salted caramel version of itself, whether it had any business being that or not.
Although, I ask you.
Is wanting to pour Butterscotch Sauce on everything really a problem?
Is it really so awful that I considered pouring butterscotch sauce over my Greek yogurt this morning? I didn't do it, proving that I still possess a shred of self-restraint.
Said self-restraint did not however make an appearance last night when I impulsively began baking a cake at 8pm just to have something to pour butterscotch sauce on.
And self-restraint was not even in the building this past Sunday when I made my husband pause the show we were watching so I could get in the car, drive to the store, and purchase vanilla ice cream on which I could pour butterscotch sauce.
Sigh.
Butterscotch Sauce, thy name is passion.
And for good reason.
This. Stuff. Is. Freaking. Fantastic.
Butterscotch sauce is also really easy to make. Which is either super fabulous or super dangerous, depending on your point of view. My current point of view is that quite a few recipes on this blog in the near future will include Butterscotch Sauce.
So, prepare yourself and go make a batch.
Used in this recipe:
Other recipes you might like:
Butterscotch Sauce
Butterscotch Sauce is a Building Block Recipe
Building block recipes are tried-and-true recipes that I consider foundational to great home baking. They are the kind of recipes I come back to over and over again, sometimes baking them as is, but often using them as a jumping off point to create something new. > Scroll through all Building Block recipes.
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Butterscotch Sauce Recipe
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Cook Time: 10 mins
- Total Time: 15 mins
- Yield: 3 cups
Description
This Butterscotch Sauce is ultra rich, silky smooth, and creamy. The lemon juice, zest and rum are all optional ingredients; however, they are virtually undetectable in the finished sauce and add flavor complexity while helping to cut the richness.
Ingredients
- 2 ¼ cup heavy cream
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp dark rum
- 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
- ½ cup light corn syrup
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 tbsp packed lemon zest
- ¼ cup (4 tbsp) butter
Instructions
- Add 1 ¼ cups of the cream, salt, vanilla, rum and lemon juice to a small bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.
- Add the remaining 1 cup of cream, corn syrup, brown sugar, lemon zest, and butter to a medium heavy bottomed saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until boiling. Reduce heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring often, until the mixture reaches 240 degrees on a candy thermometer.
- Remove the sauce pan from the heat and slowly stir in the rum cream.
- Pour the sauce into a container and allow to cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.
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Love this great recipe. It looks amazing in those beautiful pictures!!! So rich and silky. Perfect topping for any ice cream.
Thank you Jessi! xoxo
Hi, was wondering, as my experience with combining cream with an acid such as lemon juice will cause the cream to curdle. In making this sauce, you never found this to be a problem?
Great question CJ. I've never had any issues with the cream curdling for a couple of reasons... Heavy cream is much more stable than milk and will take a long time to curdle if the acid is added when it's cold. That's why the portion of cream that includes the lemon juice is added off heat after the sauce is finished cooking. Another factor is the proportion of acid to fat in this recipe. Because there is so much more fat in the sauce than acid, the fat coats the small amount of casein molecules present in cream, safeguarding them from the acid. So, just make sure you're using heavy cream, that the cream is fresh, and that you add the lemon juice and rum to cold cream, and you should be good! Let me know what you think of this sauce after you make it! xo