Brown Butter Butterscotch Chocolate Fudge Sauce

Let’s make something awesome, shall we? Better yet, let’s take something awesome already, and make it peerless!

Butter is a beautiful thing. I don’t say it enough and it doesn’t always get the credit its due, but butter makes a lot of things… better (imagine butter on fresh toast). And brown butter is… well, that’s just even better. That nutty, caramelized, toasty flavour is pretty darn hard to beat. If you brown butter often enough you will know how it can transform a dish of steamed vegetables into something amazing. And Plain Pasta into something you can eat on its own!

So when I take brown butter and make it star in something that’s wonderful in its own right like butterscotch fudge sauce, it’s time to break out my happy dance! And it’s so easy, you will wonder why we haven’t been doing this all our lives! I even threw some bitter sweet chocolate into the mix for good measure. Trust me, you won’t ever regret making this Brown Butter Butterscotch Chocolate Fudge Sauce.

I actually came up with the idea for this sauce when I was bouncing around ideas for pancake syrup flavours, in my head. I’m fairly conventional in that I love maple syrup and it’s always my first choice for pancake syrup. But I do love to experiment with homemade pancake syrup too. I also like chocolate fudge sauce and my hubs loves butterscotch sauce. So naturally, I combined the two.

My next question was, if brown butter makes a lot of things so much better… shouldn’t it, couldn’t it, wouldn’t it.. make butterscotch better? I needed to find out. And I did. And you know the answer by now.

Browning butter is simple. But if you don’t keep an eye on it, it can quickly burn and become useless. So make sure you stick around after the butter bubbles up, stops foaming and then starts to caramelize. It’s hard to give you the exact time that it takes to achieve the proper “brownness”, but here is a visual guide for you to be able to tell when the butter will be done. If you’re using a dark saucepan, use a light coloured spoon or plate to keep track of the caramelization process as shown in the picture below. It happens very quickly (much like making caramel).

The stages of Browning Butter

You can use brown butter that is at stage 2 or 3, but personally I prefer when some of the butter solids are almost burnt. In terms of taste, there isn’t a huge difference between the last two stages, but there is definitely a difference between stage 2 and 4/5. The nutty flavour is far more pronounced at stage 4/5 and the solids are also slightly bitter, but perfect for this sauce.

You will start to smell the hazelnutty, toasty flavour around stage 2, which gets stronger as you go. And that will manifest in the actual taste as well.

Brown Butter Butterscotch Chocolate Fudge Sauce

Author: Dini from Giramuk's Kitchen

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Ingredients

• 1 stick of unsalted butter 115g / 4oz
• ½ cup packed light brown sugar
• 3 tbsp corn syrup
• ½ cup whipping cream
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 oz bittersweet chocolate

Instructions

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, over medium heat. Once the butter has melted, continue to keep it on medium heat to make brown butter, but stir frequently and keep an eye on it.
2. Check the colour of the butter solids frequently until the solids turn dark brown with a few black flecks (that's almost burnt butter).
3. At this stage, immediately add the sugar, corn syrup, salt and stir to combine. Add the cream soon afterwards, and reduce the heat to medium low. Let the sugar dissolve and the sauce come to a boil. Let it bubble (boil) gently for about 5 minutes, while stirring frequently.
4. Add the chocolate and vanilla and stir until the chocolate has completely melted.
5. Store in a glass bottle/jar with an air-tight lid. Let it cool slightly and pour over whatever you like.
6. Once the sauce cools, it does thicken. To make it pourable again, just microwave the jar (without the lid) for about 10-15 seconds, place the lid back on and give it a shake.

So what did I do with this sauce? Or more accurately, what didn’t I do with it?

This was drizzled on
Pancakes,
Waffles,
Toast,
Ice cream,
Strawberries,
and Mr K even had it with his oatmeal for breakfast.

Aaaand, we also did this!

Yep, a chocolate bundt cake, covered in a luscious layer of this fantastic brown butter butterscotch chocolate fudge sauce! Don’t say I didn’t warn you! 
(Side note: recipe for the bundt cake is not included in this post. This post is all about the sauce. But if you are interested in the cake recipe, do leave a comment below or send me a message and I will put it up).

This sauce is truly incredible. Do you see those beautiful specks of milk solids on the wall of that glass jar in that picture above? That’s the BEST part about this sauce. Those specks are what give this sauce that nutty, toasty flavour that you will absolutely love! This could very well be the perfect and the most indulgent fudge sauce I’ve ever had. The small amount of bitter sweet chocolate dulls the sweetness a little bit and adds another dimension of flavour obviously. But you can easily omit that from the recipe if you so prefer.

This brown butter butterscotch sauce goes with everything! It’s like the little black dress of desserts! 🙂

And can I tell you something else? I made this chocolate bundt cake, just so that I could pour this gorgeous fudge sauce all over it. (No, I’m not kidding. Not even trying to).

And then cut a nice big slice like this.

And then pour some more sauce over it.

Over the top? You betcha.
And under and around and on the sides too! 🙂 You know what, just take that piece of cake and dunk it in the sauce. I dare you not to! 🙂

And this insanely delicious butterscotch fudge sauce also went over this Buttermilk Pancake Ice Cream with Blackberry Chips!

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