Salted Caramel Sauce with honey and vanilla

Homemade caramel is so easy to make with just a few ingredients and it genuinely tastes so much better than store bought. I know it seems tricky but if you follow the simple steps I have shown in the pictures below it's not really that hard.

The key is to have all your ingredients ready, watch the syrup colour closely and take it off the stove as soon as it reaches the perfect golden colour. The photo's below show the progression from clear to gold over about 6 minutes. But once it reaches that golden stage you don't have a lot of time. 

Make sure you have a safe spot to pop your hot saucepan onto to whisk in the cream, and also that the cream and butter are already measured and your whisk is already out and ready to go.

Oh and defiantly make sure you warm your cream. If your cream is prewarmed before you pour it in, it will not seize or become a big clumpy mess when you add it to the super hot syrup. A few seconds in the microwave to get the cream lukewarm will make a big difference to your caramel making experience.

This batch in the photo's has a touch of honey, salt and vanilla to add flavour, but really you can leave all those ingredients out. 

Edible cookie dough recipe CLICK HERE

I drizzled this caramel onto some chocolate chip cookie cups filled with scoops of cookie dough frosting (CLICK HERE for cookie dough recipe) and it was incredibly decadent. Then I followed up with brownie cups filled with the same frosting and they were even more delicious.

Once you learn how to make caramel sauce you'll be reluctant to ever buy it again it's so easy and seriously tastes so much better.

Happy Baking 

XX

Linda M

Caramel Sauce for drizzling or dipping - yield just over 1 cup. Best storage is airtight sterile glass container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks. Can be stored in fridge or frozen. I have used a little honey in this sauce, if you prefer you can use liquid glucose or light corn syrup. 

200g (7 1/8 oz) white granulated sugar
45 g (1 5/8oz) water
1 tsp honey
40 g (1 3/8oz) butter (heated in microwave for 20 seconds)
120 g (4 1/4oz) cream (heated in microwave for 30 seconds)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla

Put water, honey and sugar into a saucepan and stir very gently.

Cook on medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. DO NOT STIR!

Increase heat until the mixture boils and becomes a clear syrup and then starts to turn golden.

If necessary swirl the pan very gently and only a little to cook evenly, do not stir. 

Cook until the colour reaches the desired strength of caramel, around 6-8 minutes. The one in the pictures was simmered for approximately 6 minutes.

Remove from heat, add the cream whisk , then add the butter and whisk until well combined 

Add the vanilla and salt and whisk again. Pour into a clean jar.

This caramel is drizzle consistency, if you want it thicker return to heat (at medium low) after adding cream and butter and cook for a little bit longer until it thickens. The consistency in these pictures is for drizzling or dipping and it will not harden. 

I stored my caramel in a clean glass jar at room temperature and it lasted for 2 weeks. Ensure your glass is very clean and the utensils you put into it are also clean. You can also store in fridge or if you want freeze smaller portions in ziplock bags and defrost in fridge as needed.

I used a disposable zip lock bag to pipe the sauce onto the cookies

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Linda McCubbin is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US in 2011 (under my previous name Linda Vandermeer).

Original photos and recipe from the Bubble and Sweet blog ©Linda McCubbin 2025. I love when people share my blog ideas and give credit. Please feel free to link back to my blog for non commercial purposes or contact me. Affiliate links and adds may earn me money, however all ideas and opinions are my own.

Sweet's 19th Birthday Cake inspired by Monet water lilies and Ducks

Sweet had her 19th birthday a few weeks back and I when I asked her what kind of cake she wanted she chose blueberry and lemon. So I came up with a vanilla blueberry cake with layers of homemade lemon curd covered in a vanilla Italian meringue.

To decorate, I decided to channel my love for Sweet and I came up with a mildly chaotic, colourful, beautifully whimsical cake.

Inspired by the feelings of Monet's water lilies and with cute meringue ducks swimming across the top it was a fun quirky cake.

To be honest I'm more team chocolate but the lemon curd layers are so pretty

To make the the lemon layers in the cake I used the microwave lemon curd recipe from my YouTube video CLICK HERE FOR LEMON CURD RECIPE link. 

I made 3 batches of my lemon curd and mixed in 1/2 a leaf of gelatine per batch (so 1 1/2 for all 3 batches) and set each batch into a 4" circle mould. It was a lot of lemon curd as a ratio to cake and I would probably use less if I did it again, although the layers did look super pretty. Disclaimer I am more of a chocolate fan so I do find lemon desserts a little overwhelming and I was eating it after a piece of chocolate cake.

Anyway I still had not decided how I was going to decorate the cake while I was making it. I was quite keen to use meringue ducks due to Sweet's fondness of both meringue and ducks however the cake design apart from lemon, blueberry and meringue ducks was not yet set.

The whole cake was really just background for the ducks

Whilst I was filling and stacking the cake I decided it already had a lot of sweet layers going on and thought that a semi naked cake with not a lot of frosting would be best. Which swayed my design to this muted watercolour theme.

I barely used any buttercream in the decorating layer, perhaps less that 3/4 of a cup of buttercream on the whole four layer 6" cake which is quite scant. 

To decorate I popped a few spoonfuls of my Italian Meringue Buttercream into seperate bowls and added a teensy touch of food colour and used a palate knife to pat on the coloured buttercream. Once I started I hated the colours, scrapped it off and realised it needed to be a bit more muted instead.

To achieve more muted colours, mix in a little of the other colours to 'muddy' them and take the clean edge of them. For example mix a little of the green or blue and yellow into the pink, a bit of the pink into the blue and green, and some green and pink into the yellow by just adding little touches of the already mixed buttercream into the other buttercreams (probably don't add extra drops of food colour for these small amounts of frosting it will be too much).

relaxed laid back decorating is my favourite kind

Once I was happier with the colours I resumed patting on the buttercream with the offset palate knife. By pressing down and pulling up you get the rough looking finish on the top that I have achieved. I finished with a bit of food grade edible gold leaf applied randomly for a touch of luxury.

Once the cake was ready to serve I let Sweet choose the placement of the ducks and waterlily flowers. 

We served this cake with macarons and a seperate chocolate cake which was a deep black cocoa tall layer cake. You can find the instructions and recipe for the chocolate cake by clicking here BLACK VELVET CAKE RECIPE LINK.

Black velvet chocolate cake (RECIPE HERE) and lemon layer cake 19th birthday cakes

Although the vanilla blueberry cake was yummy I'm not ready to share it yet as I felt it didn't hold up well enough as a decorated layer cake. It still has a small amount of tweaking. Or perhaps I might look at turning it into more of a snack cake as the flavour is delicious. 

stay tuned xx

Happy Baking

Linda M

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I hand piped these adorable little meringue ducks. The babies were the cutest thing.

Linda McCubbin is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US in 2011 (under my previous name Linda Vandermeer).

Original photos and recipe from the Bubble and Sweet blog ©Linda McCubbin 2025. I love when people share my blog ideas and give credit. Please feel free to link back to my blog for non commercial purposes or contact me. Affiliate links and adds may earn me money, however all ideas and opinions are my own.

Edible Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (that's safe to eat)

Safe to eat chocolate chip cookie dough frosting

I grew up in the 70's and 80's back when times were a bit wild and no one blinked an eye at eating cake batter or cookie dough straight from the bowl. To be honest I would still do it, because I'm crazy like that, but when serving for other people especially in a cake that might be served up a few days later ensuring food safety standards are met is essential.

This cookie dough is super delicious but has no egg and has heat treated flour which ticks the raw dough eating boxes.

Chocolate Chip Cookies topped with chocolate chip cookie dough frosting and caramel sauce

Um so yeah, OK...but what is heat treated flour I hear you ask? Well, flour is essentially a raw food. Heat treating flour is simply a process of heating the flour at a high enough temperature that it kills potential bad things.  When you cook a cake in the oven you should be heating it at a high enough temperature that you're covered, however a big slab of raw cookie dough in the centre of a cake is a different story. 

I've included how I heat treat my flour down below along with the super easy recipe for the edible cookie dough. 

This cookie dough can be used as a filling in cakes like my midnight sky black velvet layer cake, to frost cookies and cupcakes or you can cover it in chocolate and make little truffle balls

Edible cookie dough layers in a black velvet layer cake.
I left out the 2 Tbsp milk in this edible cookie dough version  CLICK HERE for cake recipe 

You can easily change the consistency of it by adding more milk or less milk. For example the cake layers in these pictures I left out the milk as it was a tallish cake, but the frosted cookies have the 2 tablespoons of milk included in the recipe. 

As always it's your recipe so change the chocolate chips up anyway you like. I hand piped little mini dark chocolate chips for the cookies but you can use milk chocolate, white chocolate, or any type and mixture you like. Plus you can add 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, ginger or allspice if you want to  mix it up a bit.

These brownie cups filled with edible cookie dough tasted waaay too good
and I'm banning myself from making them for a while.

I actually love this dough more than I should. Chocolate chip cookies topped with edible raw chocolate chip cookie dough is something I did not know I needed in my life, but they were seriously good. A few days later I made up a batch of brownies and did the same and they were some next level yumminess.

Happy Baking until next post

XX

Linda M

Made these for the photo ops, but they were seriously good.
So good I made a brownie version a few days later

Edible Cookie Dough Recipe - makes around 2 cups. This cookie dough is firm and is sturdy enough to support a few cake layers (as per the pictures). It is also delicious as a 'truffle' covered in chocolate.  

114g (4oz) unsalted butter at room temperature 
85g (3oz) 1/2 cup brown sugar
45g (1 5/8oz)1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
125g (4 3/8oz) 1 cup heat treated flour #
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips (mini if available)

#Heat treat flour by spreading flour onto an oven try and baking for 15 minutes in an oven preheated to 180C (350F). Try to not have the flour too thick. I usually do only a few cups per tray. Allow to cool to room temperature. I often make in advance and store mine in a glass jar until I need it.

Make Edible Cookie Dough - Cream butter and both sugars at high speed until the mixture is light and fluffy. This creaming step should take a few minutes.

Add vanilla and mix on high until completely combined. Add flour and salt and mix on medium speed until all the dry ingredients are well mixed in.

Add the chocolate chips and mix for a few seconds until they are evenly distributed.

I like to use my dough straight away, but you can chill it for up to a few days. You may need to let it soften a bit depending on what you are using it for.

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Original photos and recipe from the Bubble and Sweet blog ©Linda McCubbin 2025. I love when people share my blog ideas and give credit. Please feel free to link back to my blog for non commercial purposes or contact me. Affiliate links and adds may earn me money, however all ideas and opinions are my own.

Linda Mccubbin is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US in 2011 (under my previous name Linda Vandermeer).