Toasted Brown Butter Dessert Sauce

By Sprig Originals ✓ · cooked up in Sprig

A pourable dessert sauce built on properly browned butter — every one of those toasted milk solids stays in the pan, so the finished sauce tastes like hazelnuts, toffee and warm caramel instead of just sweet cream. Brown sugar and heavy cream turn it glossy and spoon-coating in about ten minutes, and it stays pourable straight from the fridge after a quick warm-up. Ladle it over vanilla ice cream, bread pudding, roasted pears, pound cake, waffles or a wedge of dark chocolate torte.

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), cut into tablespoon-size pieces

• 3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 2 tbsp light corn syrup or golden syrup
• 3/4 cup heavy cream, at room temperature
• 3/4 tsp fine sea salt
• 2 tsp vanilla extract, or seeds from 1/2 vanilla bean
• 1 tbsp bourbon or dark rum (optional)
• flaky sea salt, for finishing (optional)

Instructions

1. Set up before you start: measure the brown sugar, corn syrup, cream, salt and vanilla and keep them within arm's reach. Once the butter browns, the sauce moves fast. Use a light-colored stainless steel saucepan (2- to 3-quart) if you have one — you need to see the color of the milk solids.
2. Melt the butter over medium heat, swirling the pan. It will foam up as the water cooks off, around 3 to 4 minutes. Keep swirling and scraping the bottom with a heatproof spatula.
3. After 5 to 8 minutes total the foam will subside, the crackling will quiet down, and the milk solids on the bottom will turn from pale tan to deep amber. It should smell like toasted hazelnuts. Pull the pan off the heat the moment the solids are the color of a walnut shell — they carry on darkening in the residual heat. Do not strain: those specks are the whole point of this sauce.
4. Off the heat, add the brown sugar and corn syrup and stir hard with the spatula for about 30 seconds. The mixture will look thick, grainy and a little broken. That is normal.
5. Return the pan to medium-low heat and pour in the cream in a slow stream, stirring constantly. It will bubble up aggressively for a few seconds, then settle. Add the salt.
6. Simmer, stirring often, for 4 to 6 minutes, until the sauce is smooth, glossy and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon — 218°F to 222°F on an instant-read thermometer. It should still fall from the spoon in a ribbon; it thickens considerably as it cools.
7. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the vanilla and the bourbon or rum, if using. Let the sauce sit for 2 minutes, then whisk once more to bring everything together — the toasted specks will suspend evenly through the sauce.
8. Cool for 10 minutes before serving warm; finish each portion with a small pinch of flaky salt. Store in a jar in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Chef's tips

Nutrition (per serving, estimated)

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