If company is coming and I don’t know what to serve for dessert, I make caramel sauce. It has 5 ingredients – well 6 if you include a pinch of salt. It keeps endlessly in the fridge and it’s good on just about anything sweet.

The easiest thing to do is serve ice cream with a nice warm drizzle of homemade caramel sauce. Go fancy and roll the ice cream into a ball coated with heath bar chips, nuts, or grated chocolate.

Caramel sauce is a marvelous dip with fresh strawberries and apple slices. Pour warm caramel sauce on a pound cake – homemade or from the store and you’ve got a masterpiece. Here is my family’s’ favorite – don’t laugh – cut a thawed piece of puff pastry in four pieces. Add a handful of chocolate chips to each square and fold over into a triangle. Bake until brown – then float in a little pool of caramel sauce. What more could anyone want? The sauce cooks in 5 minutes, it keeps in the fridge for weeks (not sure how many – never lasts long enough here), and everyone likes it. This could be the perfect Valentine’s Day treat. Any way you decide to serve caramel sauce you will be treating yourself as well so make this soon. Enjoy!

Directions

Combine sugar, half & half, butter, and salt in saucepan.

Stir with a whisk over medium low heat for 5-6 minutes until it starts to thicken.

Remove from heat and add vanilla and bourbon if using – cook stirring for 1 more minute.

Cool slightly and use or refrigerate in a jar with a tight lid.

Tune in to Talk of the Town Wednesday at 11:00 to see what I’m cooking!