If you want to level up your everyday salted caramel sauce- which right everyone totally has an everyday caramel sauce… Add miso to the mix for a deep umami flavor. I use white (shiro) miso as it has a milder flavor than yellow (shinshu) or red miso. I personally think white miso accentuates the caramel flavor best but use whichever you’d like or have on hand for a different caramel flavor profile. Though since yellow and red have a saltier taste to them I would adjust the amount you add!
I love using this caramel to fill a vanilla cake with along with vanilla whipped cream, blackberry jam and vanilla Swiss buttercream! It just adds a lil sumn sumn to an otherwise classic blackberry chantilly cake.
This recipe makes 500 grams of miso caramel.
Ingredients:
240 grams granulated sugar
175 grams heavy cream
75 grams butter, room temp
15 grams white miso paste
Directions:
In a small saucepan heat up the heavy cream and miso paste together. Whisk together to dissolve the miso into the cream. Keep warm to ensure it incorporates into the caramel easier later.
Meanwhile place a pot over medium heat. Allow the pot to heat up before adding in any sugar- we’re gonna be doing a dry method caramel.
Once the pot is hot add 1/4 of the sugar to the pot. Evenly sprinkle it around the bottom of the pot. The sugar will begin to melt- don’t stir until it’s mostly melted and the edges begin to turn brown. Adding the sugar in separate additions helps to avoid major sugar clumping.
Add the next 1/4 of sugar, stirring with a spatula to combine it into the already melted sugar. Allow this addition to fully dissolve into the last and take on a little bit more color.
Continue this process with the remaining two additions of sugar.
Once all the sugar has been added, cook the caramel until it takes on an amber color. It’ll begin to smoke lightly but don’t worry- thats normal!! You are burning sugar after all :)
Take the caramel to a deep amber color- the dark the caramel the more smokey and bitter the flavor will be. The lighter the caramel the sweeter it will be.
Once at your desired shade turn off the heat. Slowly add in the warm miso cream. You want the cream to be warm otherwise cold cream will seize the hot caramel. The water in the cream will sputter and boil off creating a lot of hot steam. SO BE VERY CAREFUL!! Stir to combine the cream into the caramel.
Turn the heat back on to medium and cook the caramel for about a minute more until the bubbling slows and thickens a bit.
Immersion blend in the butter. You can also just whisk it in if you don’t have an immersion blender- but I find the texture is SoOOoososO SMOOTH when you use an immersion blender.
Allow to cool to room temp before storing in the fridge up to 3 weeks. The caramel will solidify in the fridge but you can heat it up in the microwave whenever you want to use some.
After failing at another caramel recipe SIX TIMES, I tried this one and had success on the first go. It did seize up a tiny bit in my cold kitchen when i was adding the cream, but it was nothing a little heat couldn't fix, and the end result is a bowl of caramel sauce i just can't stop eating! (ok, a lie. i have to go to sleep so i put it in the fridge). My one question is about what the consistency should be when it's fresh off the stove. Still very.runny, right? I was thinking “it’s molten sugar and butter why do I expect it to be thick already?” But also “but maybe I’m wrong”
i wanted to make a gochujang caramel and ended up using this recipe as a guide! i was trying to think on where exactly to incorporate it and found your step of melting it down in the cream first made a lot of sense. instead of 15g miso i swapped in 25g gochujang for a deep rich spicy vibe and it worked perfectly!