Caramel sauce

I got this recipe from this blog http://yankeehoosiermomma.blogspot.com/2011/04/homemade-caramel-sauce.html and it is delicious! With my eldest being on a special diet we make a lot of our sweets and treats from scratch and I was excited to find this easy recipe. Would be great drizzled on ice cream or other desserts. I also used it as a base in a recipe that called for caramel.

Ingredients
1 cup sugar (I used brown sugar thinking it would give it a richer flavor but I think she used white)
1/4 cup water
8 tbs (1 stick) of unsalted butter, cut up
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Pour sugar into a small heavy sauce pan. Pour water evenly on top of sugar. With the stove on med-high heat, hold the saucepan handle and swirl around until sugar is dissolved all the way. Once dissolved, turn heat to high, cover pan and boil for 2 minutes.  The picture below is the point I put the lid on to boil for two minutes.

Remove cover and continue to boil until syrup turns brown around the edges and turns to a nice amber color. (you will not really be able to tell if using brown sugar). Keep going....When the syrup starts to smoke, it is done! (using the brown sugar I let it boil for awhile and had a pretty good idea of when it was done and took it just barely to the point it started to smoke.)

Now, you want to remove from heat and whisk in the pieces of butter until all butter is melted and mixed in. Be careful! When you put the butter in, the syrup will bubble and start to foam up.

Once butter is combined, stir in the cream. If mixture gets lumpy, place back on heat until smooth. Stir in the vanilla and salt.

Voila! You have caramel sauce!  Store in a mason jar in the refrigerator. This makes enough for 1 pint