[Original Source]

This is an easy recipe as candy products go, and it tastes wonderful.

Use a large, heavy-bottomed pot. I used my stockpot for this and was glad of its capacity. In the center of the bottom, pile 4 cups white sugar. (I usually cook with brown sugar, but its flavors get harsh at these temperatures.) Round the rim of the pot, pour 2 cups water. This is an anti-crystallization measure. Add a half teaspoon of salt and a squirt of lemon juice. The acid is also an anti-crystallization measure. Note how there is no corn syrup in my recipe. I hate that stuff. But if it were there, it would also be an anti-crystallization measure.

Place pot on high heat and stir with a wooden or silicone spoon until the sugar is dissolved. You will now have a clear simple syrup. Stop stirring and get the spoon clean for later. Now you're going to let it stay on high heat until the sugar starts to caramelize. While that's happening, warm up a stick of butter and a pint of heavy whipping cream. Cut the butter into chunks. Keep checking on the sugar from time to time. Even with my nice gutsy stove under it this took about half an hour. You're effectively melting the sugar and boiling both cups of water clean off of it.

So why are we using the water in the first place? A couple reasons. One, it makes it easier to heat the sugar evenly, which ensures you get it all melted before any part of it is caramelized completely. This is about flavor quality, but it is also about that crystallization thing again. Two, it makes the heating progress more slowly. One can make caramel by the dry method, without any water, but it moves fast. The difference between getting it amber-colored and burning it may only be a few seconds.

Anyway. That's what's going on. From time to time as it's heating, you'll want to wash the sides of the pot down. Little spatters of sugar syrup go up there and dry out and form sugar crystals, and if those fall into the mix later they may cause a whole bunch more crystals to form, and your caramel sauce will become gritty. If you have a pastry brush, that's a useful tool, but not strictly necessary: I did my last one by rolling a long rectangle of brown paper around a chopstick, so I could hold the top of the roll and use the stick to move the bottom of the roll around the pot. Worked like a charm.

You may enjoy the change in size and sound of the bubbles as the water boils out and the sugar gets hotter. Someday I'm gonna study that closely so I know what exactly it's doing at different temperatures. Eventually, it will start to turn yellow. Watch it closely now. When it's amber-colored, it's time to add the cream. Get your clean spoon and your warm cream, and pour the cream into the sugar at arm's length while stirring well. It will release a great deal of steam, it may spit molten sugar, and it will foam up to three or four times the volume of its ingredients. Keep stirring until the foaming starts to decrease. Then take it off the heat and stir in the butter. This will make it smooth again, and hopefully the caramelization plus the Maillard browning from the cream will have given it a nice brown color. It's quite good as it is, but you can also add half a tablespoon of vanilla extract. When it's cooled to the thickness you like, you can eat it, or when it's cool enough to manage you can put it in jars.

Makes 2-3 pints, which is more than enough for dipping apples in, and pouring over IceCream (take viscous sauce from refrigerator, spoon and scrape glob into dish, microwave for 30 seconds, pour now-runny sauce all over ice cream), and bedding BrowniesFromScratch on, and bathing with, and so on.