Do you have a cooking and/or baking bucket list? I have an ongoing list in my head…I think I need to write one up soon. But making caramel sauce was on it for a long time. I was so scared to try…

But finally did it and it's easy to make!!! You should try it! Check out the full recipe and tutorial with step by step photos over on my friend, Ree's site.

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Salted Caramel Sauce Recipe

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 8 servings

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
• 1/4 cup Water
• 1 stick Unsalted Butter Cubed, Room Temperature
• 3/4 cups Heavy Cream Room Temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1 Tablespoon To 1 1/2 Tablespoons Sea Salt

Instructions

• for the complete recipe, visit Ree's site

Here are some recipes you can make with caramel sauce!

Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream
Peanut Butter Millionaire Shortbread Bars
Chocolate Peanut Butter Marshmallow Squares
Chocolate Bourbon Caramel Cups with Salted Pistachios
Salted Caramel Brownies

The post How to Make Caramel Sauce appeared first on The Little Kitchen.

This past summer, we attended the 50th anniversary party for our neighbors. Being married for 50 years is a huge accomplishment and they are such a fun couple! It was a potluck and someone brought a brownie trifle with fudge sauce and whipped cream that was to die for. I knew I had to make it one day but I thought I would change the fudge to a salted caramel sauce.

I love working with Land O Lakes and this is my fifth and final post for Kitchen Conversations this year. Since it's all about butter, I had to do it up big. Making my own caramel sauce has been on my bucket list for a long time but I was scared. I know and it was an unreasonable kind of scared but I conquered it! (If you have never made it before, please do. You can do it!) I made the most amazing and simple salted caramel sauce…that I know you'll love! And the best fudgy brownies! Both with Land O Lakes® Unsalted Butter.

It's officially the holiday season so I always have tons of Land O Lakes Butter on hand for baking and cooking. I love the Flavor Protect Wrapper® it comes in so it stays fresher longer. And I need to admit I actually get twitchy when I'm down to only one box of butter!

Let's start with the caramel. Cut the butter into cubes and let it sit on the counter to come to room temperature.

Add sugar and water and mix. THEN turn the heat on. Once the heat is on, you do not want to mix or the sugar will crystalize. Swirl the pot a little bit.

You can use a brush with water to break down the crystalized sugar on the sides.

Once it starts turning an amber color, add the butter. Turn the heat down to low.

Be careful when adding the butter and the heavy cream, it does bubble up a little bit.

Whisk vigorously until well blended.

Add the heavy cream.

And whisk again.

Add vanilla extract and sea salt and whisk again.

Caramel! It did take me three times and I finally got it. I didn't whisk the ingredients when I needed to, I thought mixing was good enough. Don't make the same mistake, so make sure you whisk vigorously until well blended.

To make the brownies, chop up bittersweet chocolate.

Save yourself some time by covering your bowl in plastic when melting it in the microwave.

Whisk the cocoa powder, hot water and chocolate until it's completely melted. Add the melted butter and whisk.

Add sugar and whisk. Then, add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix with a rubber spatula.

Add the dark chocolate chips and mix just to combine.

Pour the batter into a foil lined baking dish that's been sprayed with baking spray.

Once the brownies cool, cut them into bite-sized pieces and layer them with whipped cream and salted caramel.

It's seriously amazing. I pretty much know that I'm going to have homemade caramel sauce in my refrigerator at all times. It's a must-have in my house now!

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Salted Caramel Brownie Trifles with Whipped Cream Recipe

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 50 minutes minutes

Resting Time 2 hours hours

Ingredients

Salted Caramel Sauce

• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 3/4 cup heavy cream room temperature
• One Land O Lakes® Unsalted Butter Stick 1/2 cup, cubed, room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 to 1 1/2 Tablespoons sea salt

Brownies

• 1/2 cup Land O Lakes® Unsalted Butter 1 stick, melted and cooled
• 1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder or instant coffee granules
• 1/3 cup hot water
• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate chopped
• 3 large eggs beaten
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup dark chocolate chips

Whipped Cream

• 3 cups heavy whipping cream
• 3 teaspoons granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Instructions

Salted Caramel Sauce

• Add sugar and 1/4 cup water to a stainless steel pot (that has a heavy bottom and high sides). Mix to combine and then turn heat to medium high.
• Swirl the pan but don't stir! Cook until the sugar turns to a caramel color, about 13-14 minutes (watch carefully so it doesn't burn).
• Turn heat down to low. Add butter (it will be really hot so be careful) and whisk until thoroughly combined. Again, being careful, Add heavy cream and whisk thoroughly.
• Remove from heat and add vanilla extract and salt (add more if you like it more salty) and whisk thoroughly. Allow to cool completely before putting into an airtight container and refrigerating.

Brownies

• Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9-inch baking pan with foil. Spray with baking spray and set aside.
• Melt butter and set aside. Whisk flour and salt in a small mixing bowl.
• Add cocoa powder, espresso powder, and chocolate to a large mixing bowl. Add hot water and whisk together until chocolate is melted. Add butter and whisk thoroughly. Add eggs and vanilla extract and whisk until thoroughly combined. Next, add sugar and same, whisk until thoroughly combined. Add dry ingredients and mix with a rubber spatula just until combined. Don't over mix.
• Add chocolate chips and using the rubber spatula, mix in. Pour batter into prepared pan.
• Spray an offset spatula with baking spray and spread batter so it's even and the top is smooth. Bake for 35 minutes.
• Remove from oven and place on baking sheet for 10 minutes. Picking up foil on both ends, remove from pan and place on baking sheet and allow to cool for at least 2 hours.
• Cut brownies into square bite-sized pieces.

Whipped Cream

• While the brownies are baking, add whipped cream ingredients to a large glass mixing bowl and mix on medium high speed with an electric hand mixer until cream has stiff peaks, at least 4 to 5 minutes. Store in the refrigerator until needed.

Assembly

• Layer brownies, salted caramel sauce and whipped cream in small trifle bowls or one large one. Refrigerate until ready for serving, up to one day.

Tips:

• Melt butter in a bowl covered with plastic wrap in your microwave. Melt in 8-10 second increments or use melt function.

Disclosure: The Little Kitchen has partnered with Land O’Lakes for an exclusive endorsement of Land O Lakes® Butter for their Kitchen Conversation blogger program. This blog post is sponsored by Land O’Lakes.

The post Salted Caramel Brownie Trifles with Whipped Cream appeared first on The Little Kitchen.

Ahh cookies! Lindsay says today, is the day we take over the internet with tons of cookies. For the last couple of weeks, food bloggers from all over the world have been baking, testing and retesting and then shipping their cookies to fellow food bloggers. It's been exciting for us to watch all of the posts. And even more exciting that we're able to announce that we also raised $13,778.40 for Cookies for Kids' Cancer!!!

Lindsay and I started the cookie swap, three years ago to receive cookies in the mail from other bloggers and of course taste them. When we partnered with Cookies for Kids' Cancer last year, we raised over $4,400 and that brings the grand total to over $18,000 in total raised for C4KC because of a little thing, our cookie swap. Thanks to ALL of the bloggers who joined and huge props go out to our sponsors who matched donations, without them, we would never have made it above our goal of raising over $10,000 this year…a huge huge thank you to Dixie Crystals, Gold Medal Flour and Grandma's Molasses and OXO.

Other numbers: we had 622 participants from all over the world with everyone sending 3 dozen cookies out, that's 22,392 cookies. Can you imagine that many cookies being shipped across the country here and in other countries around the world? Wow, just wow. Every year, I'm amazed at how many people sign up and the sheer number of cookies being baked and shipped!

So true, so true isn't it? My friends are extremely important to me. They keep me grounded and they keep me sane. I'm incredibly fortunate to have an amazing and diverse group of friends. The support I get from my friends, I'll be eternally grateful for. A few days ago, was the 4 year anniversary of my starting this little food blog. And never in a million years (oh I repeat myself so many times) did I ever think or dream that I would make the best friends of my life through this food blog.

One of those people is Lindsay. My partner in crime…I actually instagrammed a picture of us (or was it a tweet?) and called her my partner (oops, haha). No one caught it though. She makes me laugh and she calms me down when I'm having a crazy day and she's the one who tweeted out three years ago, wouldn't it be great to actually taste another bloggers cookie recipe…we should really do a cookie swap. I tweeted back and the rest is all history.

I'm getting all weepy looking back on four years, my life is so much fuller and richer because of all of you, my friends. So thank you so much for being the chocolate chips in my life.

PS Be sure to check out Lindsay's cookies…they are amazing! I didn't share one cookie with anyone!

For us, it started out as being all about the cookies and now it's become so much more than that. Did you know that:

• 1 in 300 children will be diagnosed with cancer by the time they're 20 years old.
• There are 12 major types of pediatric cancer, each as unique as the child fighting it.
• Less than 4% of the National Cancer Institute's budget goes towards pediatric cancers.

The amazing fundraising efforts that Cookies for Kids' Cancer has is nothing short of extraordinary but at the same ordinary because it's through grassroots efforts like our Food Blogger Cookie Swap and bake sales around the country that they were able to grant out $1.5 million this year and in a few short years about $5 million to pediatric cancer centers as well as support pediatric cancer research. To find out more on how you can get involved, please visit Cookies for Kids' Cancer.

You have been waiting patiently to hear about the cookies, thanks for bearing with me. I always get ALL of my ingredients out first…and these are the essentials besides the cream cheese and butter of course.

Lindsay and I had these amazing bittersweet chocolate chunk cookies with sea salt at Saint Cupcake in Portland a month ago. I wanted to try my hand at making a similar recipe and after a bunch of tries and using my friend Kelly's secret ingredient for chocolate chip cookies, cream cheese. I hit the jackpot.

Be careful to not overmix the cookie dough when you're mixing in the flour and the chocolate chunks. I used two different kinds, bittersweet (Ghiradelli — btw, I can never spell that name, I always have to look it up!) and semisweet (Nestle).

Use a handy dandy cookie scoop, scoop out portions of the cookie dough onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet. And arrange like below:

No, you're not going to bake them like this, you're going to freeze or refrigerated them like this (very close together) and when you're ready to bake them, you'll want to place the cookie dough 2 to 3 inches apart.

Cookies, cookies, cookies! I'm saying this to you in my cookie monster voice. I literally feel like him sometimes. After dinner, watching tv, scrolling through my Instagram feed, I get cookie cravings. Because of these cravings, I always have cookie dough in my freezer now. Often times, I'll make two batches or only need a half batch, instead of baking all of the cookies at once, I'll freeze the dough and put it in zippered plastic bags in the freezer labeled with the date and baking temperature and time.

The cookies I'm sharing with you today are the ones I sent, the ones I received…I photographed when I got them in the mail.

I received from Lindsay Bourbon Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Shortbread cookies. And chocolate snickers cookies from another Lindsay! Nom nom!

And I also received butter cookies from Sara (it's her grandma's recipe!) and some eggnog dark chocolate chip cookies from Melissa. I enjoyed all of the cookies. I made a lot of crumbs too.

I sent cookies to Mackenzie, Christine and Kimberly. I haven't heard back from all of them but I hope they all enjoyed the cookies!

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Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Sea Salt Recipe

The inspiration for this recipe came from these bittersweet chocolate chunk cookies with sea salt that I had at Saint Cupcake in Portland, Oregon on a recent trip. While these aren’t exactly like those cookies, I do use the same kind of sea salt the famed cupcake store does, from Jacobsen Salt Co.

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Servings 48 to 50 1.5 Tablespoon cookies OR 24 to 25 3 Tablespoon cookies

Ingredients

• 3 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter two sticks, softened
• 4 ounces cream cheese softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate roughly chopped
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chunks
• sea salt

Instructions

• Mix dry ingredients together in a medium-sized mixing bowl.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer (and using a flat beater) or large mixing bowl (and using an electric mixer), beat cream cheese cheese and butter. Add both sugars and cream together thoroughly. Add vanilla extract and mix. Add eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly until combined.
• Add flour in two batches and mix with a rubber spatula. Add chocolate and mix just to combine. Don’t over mix.
• Line a small baking sheet with parchment paper and using a medium (1.5 Tablespoon) cookie scoop, scoop cookie dough portions. Place portioned cookie dough into the freezer for 3 to 4 hours or overnight. If not baking immediately, after the dough is frozen, place in one or more zippered plastic bags and label with date and baking temperature and time.
• Heat oven to 375 degrees and place cookie dough on a parchment paper lined baking sheet at least 2 to 3 inches apart. Bake for 9 to 12 minutes until slightly golden brown. Remove from oven and place parchment paper with cookies on top directly on a cooling rack. Sprinkle each cookie with a pinch or two of sea salt immediately after they come out of the oven. Store in an airtight container to maintain chewiness.

One more thing, we're so excited and honored to be featured in the current issue of the FoodieCrush digital magazine. Check it out, Lindsay and I are in a magazine! It's beautiful and I hope you'll check it out. You can download it and read it on your smartphone or tablet too!

There are affiliate links in this post.

The post Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Sea Salt appeared first on The Little Kitchen.