Christmas Candy Recipes: Ginger Spiced Caramel Sauce Recipe

The end of last week and into the weekend was spent making some decadent sauces for holiday gift giving and pure, unadulterated sugar indulgence.  I’ll let you decide what you want to do with these.

I keep getting bombarded with the Dean & Deluca ‘confections & sweets’ pages.  After perusing page after page of expensive candies and sauces my cravings and food blogging obsessiveness kicked in.  I just can’t fathom spending $14 on an 8 ounce jar of Spicy Ginger Caramel Sauce. (Unless, of course, I can dab it behind my ears and know that it will act as a seductive scent causing men everywhere to fall at my knees and offer me anything my heart desires for all of eternity.  And  then I’ll bottle it, have a highly photoshopped advertisement shot – where I pose seductively, and let the money pour in as millions everywhere buy my magical concoction.)  And why should I, since I already make caramels…it’s pretty much the same process to make homemade caramel sauce.

Since I prefer caramel sauce, to chocolate sauce, drizzled on my ice cream, making a homemade caramel sauce recipe wasn’t much of a decision for me.  But I really liked the idea of a spicy ginger kick to the sauce to make it even more versatile.  You could definitely use this homemade caramel sauce as a decadent ice cream topping, but why stop there?  Turn an ordinary piece of store bought pound cake or a simple sponge cake into a decadent treat by pooling this spicy ginger sauce underneath it and top with some freshly whipped cream.  Or add some of this caramel sauce recipe into your favorite bread pudding recipe for a new twist on an old favorite.  A bowl of the warmed caramel sauce served with sliced pears and apples makes for a delicious dish to bring to a holiday party.  Stir this caramel sauce into your favorite cup of tea and let the spicy ginger flavor help to warm you.  Or you can just sit yourself down with a spoon and dig in.

And on a bit more of a serious note.  I was recently asked the question: Corn syrup vs high fructose corn syrup, what’s the difference?  You may have noticed that several of my, and others, candy recipes call for the ingredient corn syrup or light corn syrup (for the record, the ‘light’ part only refers to the color and not the calories).  So I thought that more of you may also have that same concern and that I would answer the question here.

High fructose corn syrup is created by converting some of corn syrup’s glucose into fructose.  Chemically, it’s very similar to sucrose: 50% glucose and 50% fructose.  Corn syrup (which is what I use in candy making) is almost completely glucose.  It’s made by extracting and breaking down the starch, in corn, into glucose molecules.  In a nutshell the corn syrup vs high fructose corn syrup boils down to this (pun intended): high fructose corn syrup is a much sweeter version of corn syrup made that way by an additional process that introduces fructose to the already sweet mix.  (Fructose has been shown to cause problems in some people.)

I thought today’s relationship advice would be better represented by a Venn Diagram.  If you don’t know what in the hell I’m talking about, just take a look.  I’m pretty sure this simple picture will return a myriad of bad memories from school.  I’m a total geek, so I love diagrams like this.  I think the diagram is pretty self-explanatory, but in a nutshell, it shows that there are 3 types of guys…and by ‘getting it,’ I mean everything that’s involved in a relationship.

Tags: bread pudding recipe, caramel sauce recipe, corn syrup vs high fructose corn syrup, ginger caramel sauce, homemade caramel sauce, homemade caramel sauce recipe, Relationship Advice, spicy ginger, spicy ginger caramel sauce recipe