Dairy‑free caramel sauce

By lucylox on February 15, 2025

Dairy-free Vegan Caramel sauce, or is it butterscotch sauce? This vegan nut-free caramel spread is silky smooth, sweet and sensational

Sticky, gooey and golden, caramel is hard to beat; but often the vegan alternatives contain coconut which can overwhelm the mild sweetness of caramel, or they end up somehow being too oily and greasy due to the oils in the plant butter and cream. But not this caramel sauce, this one is perfect – mellow and oozy, transforming from a sweet sticky sauce to a spreadable gooey paste after a few hours in the fridge. This sauce is most definitely the bees knees of caramel and can feature in so many dishes.

This butterscotch sauce recipe is a veganised and slightly tweaked version of a recipe in Vanilla Black by Andrew Dargue; which also happens to be book 4 of my 25 Cookbooks in 2025 challenge. Andrew ran the well-known vegetarian restaurant Vanilla Black in Central London until 2020 and it's still a regret of mine that I never got to eat there. But luckily enough, I have the cookbook plus the recipes from a couple of lockdown Zoom cooking classes with Andrew - i know it was hellish for some people, and it's controversial to say, but i loved some bits of lockdown. We did so many fun things - online courses, quizzes, taste testings, we even learnt calligraphy and joined online banquets!

Talking about the Vanilla Black cookbook, it's one i'd highly recommend - interesting vegetarian dishes that are exciting but manageable. In fact, i have so many recipes bookmarked that i may need to cook quite a few in the coming months.

I've always loved caramel, as a child my very favourite chocolate bar was a Cadbury's caramel, and I remain a fan of golden gooey caramel. But is butterscotch or caramel you say – well actually I had to do a bit of research. In my mind butterscotch are those hard caramel candies, like a Werther's Original, whereas caramel is more of a golden oozy sugary substance, but it seems I'm wrong. Google AI confidently tells me that butterscotch is made with brown sugar, and caramel is made from white sugar. Further research seems to add that whilst both will include butter and cream , the cream is more prominent in the caramel and the butter (no surprises here!) in the butterscotch.

So, which is this? It is made with granulated sugar, dairy-free cream and plant butter, so maybe it's more caramel than butterscotch? Whichever way, it's delicious and it holds up really well to be veganised. I've used plant-based ingredients and slightly changed the ratios, mainly because that was what I had in the house, but these ratios also work well. A tip I learnt at Le Cordon Bleu was to add a small amount of Biscoff spread or nut/seed butter to help the plant-based ingredients fully emulsify – this is entirely optional but you do seem to get better results than when you don't add it.

whipped caramel - makes a fantastic icing

There are so many uses for this fabulous smooth, sweet spread - use is as a sauce, spread it on crumpets, use it to fill the very best sandwich cookies, make it into an incredible frosting or even a caramel mousse, that's just like vegan butterscotch Angel Delight but better!

Caramel Sauce or spread - dairy-free

dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free. soya-free, sesame-free, vegetarian and vegan

125 g granulated sugar
130 ml dairy-free double or whipping cream
50 g dairy-free salted butter (I used Flora plant butter in a wrapper)
Pinch of flaky salt crystals
1 tsp Biscoff spread (or seed butter (optional))

Place the sugar in a deep and heavy bottomed saucepan, place over a medium heat and let the sugar dissolve and turn golden brown without stirring the pan. This helps prevent the caramel from crystalising.
Whist it is dissolving, heat the cream in another saucepan and bring to a boil
Being very careful, pour half of the cream into the hot caramel, let the bubbles fade away and then stir fully. Repeat with the other half of the cream.
Bring it back to a simmer and cook it down for a few minutes to thicken the caramel. Once it's is a lovely deep brown colour and slightly thicker, take off the heat and stir in the cold butter cubes and salt. Finally stir in the 1tsp of Biscoff or seed butter
Pour into a clean jar and leave to cool.
Place in the fridge and this will thicken nicely to a thick caramel spread