Chocolate Sauce and Caramel Sauce
Chocolate Sauce = 1 part chocolate : 1 part cream
Caramel Sauce = 1 part sugar : 1 part cream
Chocolate sauce (chocolate and cream) and caramel sauce (sugar and cream) are so fundamental that they are almost always finessed in one direction or another in terms of flavor and texture. But they have easy baselines, general proportions to use as a springboard, and once you know them, you have an infinite array of variations, depending on the type of confection you want to make.
Chocolate sauce, also known as ganache, is made with equal parts chocolate and cream and is so easy, it almost doesn’t count as a technique. Simply pour hot cream over an equal weight of chocolate. Let the chocolate melt for a few minutes, then whisk the cream until all the chocolate is incorporated. The mixture looks at first like a badly broken sauce, but the chocolate easily blends with the cream into a gorgeous, glossy, voluptuous sauce. When this sauce cools, it will be stiff and so makes an excellent coating for cakes and fruits or it can be rolled into chocolate truffles.
Sugar cooked until it melts and browns takes on wonderful and complex flavors. This straight caramel, used for a crème caramel, will harden, but adding cream and butter to it will create a rich, opaque, pourable caramel sauce.
Other sugars or fats can be added or withheld to change the consistency and feel—corn syrup or butter, for instance, or more cream can be added for a sauce that pours cold or less cream for a stiffer ganache. Milk or even water can be used. The flavor, too, can be taken in any number of directions by infusing the cream as you heat it, vanilla or ginger or fruit zest, or by adding flavors such as a spirit, liqueur, or fruit juice.
The variations become a matter of taste and experimentation. Indeed, there is only one hard-and-fast rule for chocolate sauce: you must use good chocolate, a bittersweet or semisweet chocolate that tastes delicious on its own. After that you can hardly go wrong. In fact, some homemade chocolate sauce poured over vanilla ice cream made from a basic crème anglaise gives a pleasure that is ethereal in its simplicity and deliciousness.
Caramel sauce can likewise be taken in any number of directions and is also as flexible as ganache. Because of this, and the fact that sugar behaves differently depending on how hot you get it before adding the cream, one might argue that there isn’t a single caramel ratio—but a 1 : 1 ratio is a useful baseline. Sugar is melted in a dry pan (or with some water to dissolve it first), cooked until it’s a deep amber color, and then cream is added. For clear caramel sauces, a clear liquid can be added. Often the sauce includes butter or is finished with butter. But, again, the basic enriched caramel sauce is endlessly variable. Use half the cream for a thicker, sweeter sauce. Use milk and butter, flavored milk or cream with vanilla, or with rum, or add a few drops of lemon juice or cider vinegar.
One of my favorite variations on the caramel sauce is butterscotch sauce. In this variation brown sugar is used and butter is cooked in the caramel, which adds a distinctive nutty, complex flavor to the sauce from the cooked butter solids. Vanilla is an additional flavor, and some demand salt (caramel and salt is a felicitous pairing). I like to add a few drops of apple cider vinegar to sharpen the sweetness. As far as I can discover, this is not a traditional facet of butterscotch sauce, but when I first read in one source that vinegar gives butterscotch its distinctive flavor, I was so intrigued that I continued to use it even though most butterscotch recipes I’ve found don’t call for any acid whatsoever. I should say, what few recipes I’ve been able to find. Butterscotch recipes are scarce. Why is this? Do we no longer make it? Do we not think it’s special? My guess is that we’ve gotten so used to store-bought sauce and imitation-flavored chips that we’ve forgotten how special it can be.
Both the caramel sauce and the chocolate ganache are extraordinarily easy—it’s difficult to understand how we became so reliant on bottled sauces.
Basic Ganache
This is perhaps the simplest dessert sauce imaginable, so much so that it’s a wonder that bottled chocolate sauce even exists. The texture is exquisite and the flavor is rich. This can be used as a sauce (it will need to be warmed—microwaving is fine—before serving if you’ve chilled it in the refrigerator) for ice cream or profiteroles. It can be rolled, cold, and dusted with cocoa powder for truffles. It can be used to coat cakes and brownies for a fudgelike icing. Choose a good brand of chocolate such as Scharffen Berger or Callebaut.
8 ounces cream
8 ounces delicious bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
Bring the cream just to a simmer, pour it over the chocolate, wait 5 minutes for the chocolate to soften, then whisk the cream and chocolate until they’re completely combined. Serve immediately or chill until you’re ready to serve.
YIELD: ABOUT 2 CUPS
Ganache, or chocolate sauce, is not only one of the most delicious sauces there is, but also the easiest to make—simply pour hot cream over an equal weight of chocolate, let it sit a moment, then stir to combine.
VARIATIONS ON BASIC GANACHE
Rum-Cardamom Chocolate Sauce
8 to 10 cardamom pods, split or cut in half
One 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
8 ounces cream
1 ounce light or dark rum
8 ounces delicious bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
Combine the cardamom, ginger, and cream in a small pan. Bring the cream to a simmer, remove it from the heat, and cover. Allow the pods and ginger to steep for 30 minutes. Gently reheat the cream, add the rum, and strain over the chopped chocolate.
YIELD: A LITTLE MORE THAN A CUP
Orange-Ginger Chocolate Truffles
One 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
2 ounces freshly squeezed orange juice, strained
Zest of 1 orange
2 ounces light corn syrup
8 ounces cream
8 ounces delicious bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
Cocoa powder for dusting
Combine the ginger, the orange juice and zest, and the corn syrup in the cream. Bring to a simmer, then remove from the heat and cover. Let the ginger and zest steep for 15 minutes. Gently reheat the cream to just below a simmer and strain it over the chocolate. When the chocolate is soft, whisk it to combine it with the cream. Refrigerate the ganache until it’s set. Using your hands, roll the ganache into balls of whatever size you wish and roll them in the cocoa powder to coat them completely. Refrigerate the truffles until ready to serve.
YIELD: ABOUT TWO DOZEN 1-INCH TRUFFLES
Basic Caramel Sauce
For a caramel sauce, sugar is melted and cooked to an amber brown, then cream is whisked into it until the mixture is smooth and uniform. Two ingredients that don’t taste particularly exciting on their own or together can be otherworldly when cooked and combined.
There are two ways to melt sugar, dry and wet. For dry, sugar is melted alone over low heat. For wet, just enough water is added to achieve a texture sometimes referred to as wet sand; I find it easier to control the browning of the sugar with this method. In both cases, use a large heavy-bottomed pot—enameled cast iron is perfect for the job—and one big enough that the caramel won’t bubble up and overflow when the cream is added. The sugar should not be stirred until it’s dissolved, though you can tilt the pan to make sure it heats evenly. Once the sugar is liquefied and has begun to brown, watch it carefully (once it’s burnt, it can’t be fixed). Also, be very careful—sugar is extremely hot and once it hits your skin, it stays there. Sugar burns are among the worst in the kitchen, so cook sugar carefully and thoughtfully.
Once the sugar has reached a dark amber color, remove it from the heat and add the cream (it will begin boiling immediately and vigorously; you can reduce the splattering by heating the cream first). Whisk continuously until the cream is completely incorporated.
I like to finish the sauce with butter for flavor and richness. For variations, the cream can be increased for a sauce that’s pourable when it’s cold. It can also be reduced for a very thick, rich sauce or for simply making caramels or toffee. The cream can be flavored with a spirit or a juice or infused with a vanilla bean for variations on the basic sauce.
1 cup sugar
1 cup cream
4 ounces unsalted butter (1 stick; optional)
Heat the sugar and just enough water to begin dissolving the sugar, a few tablespoons or so, in a large heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. When the sugar is dissolved and beginning to brown, stir the sugar to ensure even cooking. When it is a beautiful dark amber, remove it from the heat and whisk in the cream, followed by the butter, if using. It will keep, well covered, in the refrigerator for up to a month. Reheat to serve.
YIELD: ABOUT 1 ½ CUPS
Old-Fashioned Butterscotch Sauce
Butterscotch has been so abused by the processed food industry (butterscotch bits, instant butterscotch pudding), few of us know why it’s so special. It is an amazing sauce more people should make at home, since you can’t buy it and few restaurants serve it. It’s delicious over the Maker’s Mark ice cream. Shuna Fish Lydon, who makes butterscotch as a pastry chef in San Francisco and writes about it on her blog, www.eggbeater.typepad.com, told me, “It’s hard to explain getting the seasoning correct, but it’s all about how the vanilla extract and the salt interact with the big sweet mass. Make a banana split one night for your kids and have that around as a sauce. That’s how it was first used in America.”
4 ounces unsalted butter (1 stick)
8 ounces dark brown sugar
8 ounces cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan or an enameled cast-iron pot, combine the butter and sugar over medium heat and cook until the sugar has melted completely and the mixture has taken on a thick frothy appearance, “lava-like,” as Shuna aptly puts it, 5 to 10 minutes. Turn off the heat. Whisk in the cream until it’s thoroughly incorporated. Let it cool for 10 minutes, then add the remaining ingredients. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
YIELD: ABOUT 1 ½ CUPS
The Best Banana Split Ever
Because you did everything except grow the banana and milk the cow. Because you can’t buy it anywhere—not like this. Because butterscotch and bananas are an amazing combination. Because this is like eating two or three desserts, but you can say it’s just one. Because there is not a more quintessential American sundae anywhere. Created in 1904 by a twenty-three-year-old pharmacist in western Pennsylvania, the banana split is an ode to innocence and excess.
1 recipe crème anglaise, frozen in an ice cream machine
4 ripe bananas
1 recipe butterscotch, warm
1 recipe ganache, warm
4 ounces cream, whipped to stiff peaks with 2 tablespoons sugar
4 to 8 maraschino cherries
Scoop portions of ice cream into 4 bowls (or 6 or 8). Split the bananas down the middle (and halve them if you wish) and arrange ½ to 1 banana per bowl. Pour about 2 ounces each of the butterscotch and chocolate sauce over the bananas and ice cream. Top with a dollop of whipped cream and a cherry.
YIELD: SERVES 4 TO 8
Toffee
I love crunchy, caramelly sweet toffee at Christmastime, a decadent confection. It was years after I first made it that it dawned on me that toffee is simply the caramel sauce ratio, replacing the cream with butter. This recipe will give you plain toffee, but most often it’s made with almonds and chocolate. If you wish, spread a single layer of slivered almonds on the bottom of a 5-to 7-inch baking dish and pour the hot toffee over them. Cover the top with 4 to 6 ounces of chopped chocolate. The almonds will cook and the chocolate will melt for a traditional crunchy English toffee preparation.
8 ounces unsalted butter (2 sticks)
8 ounces sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup slivered almonds (optional)
4 to 6 ounces chocolate, coarsely chopped, or chocolate chips (optional)
Combine the butter and sugar over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the vanilla. Cook, stirring, until the sugar has melted and the mixture has taken on an appealing toffeelike color. Pour it into a 5-to 7-inch baking dish (over the almonds, if using, and cover with the chocolate, if using).