I've been seriously working on a prototype recipe for caramel sauce and I think I'm just about ready to give it a spin.  To work the recipe up, I've been looking at all the various candy-type sauce recipes that are around. The reason you can can most of them is because they are nearly 100% sugar products, water and other non-spoilable ingredients.  They still must be processed in order to have a good shelf life (like commercial sauces that are shelf-stable until they're opened and then must be refrigerated) but because you don't have to deal with the spoilage factor or acidity a hot water bath is just fine.


The recipe I've worked up includes melted caramel candies, corn syrup, water, maple syrup and salt and bears a slight resemblance to the caramel used to cover apples.  I need to mess with the proportions though because I just realized after a trip to the store that I had assumed that candy caramels came much larger bags than they actually do.  Since I want to make the sauce as easy as possible to make I want to work the recipe out to use whole bags - why have to deal with leftovers or partial bags? I also need to decide if the sauce will be used directly out of the jar or will require heating.  In my book, heating is the way to go since I really like that hot melty ice cream effect, but some people really object to that and want something pourable.


So this is where we are on the caramel sauce issue.  I'm hoping to have the initial proportions worked out by this weekend but won't be able to test until the earliest part of August so please stay tuned.  In the meantime, I'll be posting the dilled vegetable recipe - probably on Friday - because it's that time of year again.