I am very excited to bring you this recipe for spiced pumpkin caramel sauce, friends.
With only a handful of ingredients, you can make a rich and complex sauce that is lovely poured over ice cream or layered onto a cheesecake.
You can also use it to flavor your coffee for a homemade pumpkin spice latte. If you love the flavor of pumpkin spice, you may also really enjoy my pumpkin spice caramel corn.
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You can view my spiced pumpkin caramel sauce recipe web story here.
Why You Need to Make This Pumpkin Caramel Sauce
This sauce tastes like fall, y’all.
It’s deeply flavored and rich with pumpkin spice.
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You can either use a prepared pumpkin pie spice blend or use the individual spices to make it exactly to your liking.
The recipe makes about 1 1/2 cups of sauce, and it’s easily doubled if you need more.
As I always do, I call for adding water to the sugar before caramelizing. This helps the sugar to dissolve and then caramelize much more evenly than if you only start with dry sugar.
How To Make
This is a pretty easy sauce to make. I think it took me about 15 minutes, start to finish, and that includes measuring the ingredients.
In a nutshell, you’ll:
- caramelize your sugar
- whisk in cream, spices, and pumpkin puree
- cook for a few seconds
- strain the sauce
And then you’re done.
In the following sections, I’ll go over ingredients and substitutions and walk you through exactly how to make it.
I’ll also try to answer frequently asked questions, give you some variation ideas for the sauce, some visual cues so you know what to look for, tips for success, and some ways to serve your pumpkin caramel that you may not have considered.
Here we go.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Here are the ingredients you’ll need to make your own, delicious pumpkin caramel.
- sugar: plain granulated sugar. For sweetness and also for caramel flavor and body. I don’t recommend using brown sugar, because it’s hard to tell when it caramelizes. If you want the flavor of brown sugar, add about 1 Tablespoon of molasses (not blackstrap) when you add the pumpkin puree and spices
- water: Filtered or straight from the tap. You don’t need to measure the water. You just need enough to get the sugar wet so it melts evenly, about 1/4-1/2 cup.
- salt: Since pumpkin is a vegetable, it requires a fair amount of salt to really bring out its mellow flavor. The salt also brings out the flavor of the spices and counteracts any bitterness from the caramel, especially if it ends up a bit darker in color than you had intended
- heavy cream: stops the cooking process, mellows the caramel flavor, adds body, and the fat in it helps to carry the flavor
- pumpkin puree: homemade or canned is fine. Do not substitute pumpkin pie filling
- cinnamon, ginger, and cloves: Use a mixture of these three spices to achieve your desired spicing, or just use store-bought pumpkin pie spice
- vanilla extract: Rounds out all the flavors in the sauce. Not strictly necessary, so if you don’t have any vanilla, your sauce will still be delicious
- (not pictured) butter: just a touch, and it’s optional. Adds a little shine and a touch more richness
Procedure
- Measure out your spices, cream, and pumpkin puree and have them ready to go.
- Add sugar, salt, and water to a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
- Bring it to a boil, and place a lid on it to wash down any sugar crystals, about 2 minutes.
- Remove the lid and watch carefully until the sugar begins to turn a pale yellow/orange color. Swirl the pan to promote even cooking.
- Once the sugar reaches a medium-amber color, remove it from the heat and immediately pour in the cream to stop the cooking. The caramel will bubble up and spatter. Whisk it well to combine the cream with the caramel.
- Whisk in pumpkin puree and the spices.
- Bring to a low boil for about a minute.
- Strain sauce through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl.
- Stir in vanilla and butter, and pour into a clean jar.
Equipment You May Need
You don’t need much special equipment to make this sauce.
I do recommend using a pan with a stainless steel or white interior. If you use a dark-coated pan, it’s too hard to tell what stage the caramel has gotten to, and you’re more likely to burn it.
This is the stainless steel pan that I use, and this white ceramic-lined pan is also a good choice.
Otherwise, you’ll need a wooden spoon and/or a good whisk, a fine mesh strainer, and a jar to put your sauce in.
Variations
If you don’t like pumpkin spice, you can use 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, or if you’re a ginger fan, use 1 teaspoon of ginger instead.
Stir in 1/2 cup of white chocolate chips for a white chocolate pumpkin caramel sauce.
If you’d like less pumpkin flavor, cut the amount of puree to 1/4 cup.
You can even leave the pumpkin out entirely for a pumpkin spice caramel sauce, sans vegetables. In that case, I would increase the heavy cream to 3/4 cup from 1/2 cup.
Visual How-To
Here are a couple of visual cues so you know what to look for when you’re making this recipe.
I hope you find them helpful.
Here, you can see the sugar starting to caramelize. If you want a sweeter sauce, you can pour in the cream at about this stage or maybe a little darker.
In this clip, this is the color I take my caramel to. The resulting sauce has a bit of a bitter edge, and is less sweet and more complex than a sauce made at a lighter caramel stage.
If you are planning to serve this sauce with ice cream, I recommend taking it to this point. The slight bitterness is a nice counterpoint to sweet, cold ice cream.
Also, note how the caramel and cream boil up vigorously. That’s why I recommend using a pan that is much larger than you think you’ll need.
At this point, I’m stirring in the pumpkin puree. The pot is off the heat, and you’ll notice it is still boiling.
This is due, in part, to the heavy bottom of the saucepan retaining heat.
If you are not used to making caramel, definitely err on the side of lighter caramel to give you time to stir in the cream and pumpkin before your caramel gets darker than you’d like it to be.
Here is what my sauce looked like as I was just finishing whisking in the pumpkin puree.
A whisk is definitely a better tool than a spatula for doing this job.
The only things left to do at this point are to strain the sauce and add the vanilla and butter. Tada!
Tips for Success
When working with caramel, always use a pot that is much larger than you think you need. This will leave plenty of room for when the mixture inevitably boils up when you add the cream. It’s much safer to use a pot that’s a little too big than to use one that is too small.
Add the salt to the sugar and water at the beginning of cooking. The salt will not affect the way your sugar caramelizes, and adding it at the beginning ensures that your sauce will be well-seasoned.
For a sweeter, less complex sauce, add the cream once the caramel is about the color of honey. For a less-sweet, more complex sauce, add the cream once the caramel has reached a medium amber color.
Spiced Pumpkin Caramel Sauce Q & A
As written, yes all the ingredients are gluten-free. Here is a great article from Does This Have Gluten giving a lot of good info on gluten and caramel, including a list of gf caramel brands.
Yes. Make sure your sugar is vegan, use a plant-based cream/milk substitute that will not curdle when boiled, and use plant-based butter. All other ingredients are already vegan.
Refrigerated, it will be good for a week to 10 days or so.
I would not recommend canning this sauce since it contains dairy.
Serving Suggestions
While you can certainly do the obvious and pour this sauce over ice cream–either pumpkin, coffee, or French vanilla would be my choices–here are a few more ideas for you:
Once the sauce has cooled and is nice and thick, spread about a 1/4″ layer on top of homemade or storebought cheesecake, and then sprinkle with toasted chopped pecans or candied pecans. Instant Thanksgiving dessert!
Mix some of this sauce into cream cheese frosting and use it to frost pumpkin cake or cupcakes.
Pour it over waffles. Consider these pumpkin waffles!
Add a spoonful or two to your morning coffee along with frothed or steamed milk for a homemade, sophisticated PSL-type drink.
Use it as a filling between cake layers. It would be great with carrot cake, pumpkin cake, or spiced apple cake.
A Note About Measurements
Don't let its small price and small size fool you. The Escali Primo is an accurate and easy-to-use food scale that I have used for years. It's easy to store, easy to use, has a tare function, and easily switches between grams and ounces/pounds for accurate measurements.
Questions
It will help me and other readers so much if you take a moment to rate and leave a review for this recipe.
You can use the stars to rate 1-5 (5 is best), and leave a review in the comments. It helps me make adjustments if any are needed, and comments help others decide whether the recipe is worth making.
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Thank you so much for taking the time!
Spiced Pumpkin Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
- 7 oz 1 cup, 196 grams granulated sugar
- 1/4-1/2 cup water just to dissolve the sugar before caramelizing
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt I use Morton’s
- ½ cup 4 oz, 112 grams heavy cream
- ½ cup 4 oz, 112 grams pumpkin puree
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice or your preferred mix of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and ground cloves
- 1 ½ teaspoons unsalted butter
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Put the sugar, water, and salt in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and stir to combine.
- Over medium-high heat, bring the mixture to a boil. Put the lid on and allow to boil for 2 minutes to wash down any sugar crystals from the sides of the pan.
- Remove the lid and continue boiling without stirring until the sugar begins to go from clear to honey-colored. At this point, you can swirl the pan to make sure the sugar caramelizes evenly.
- Wcatch carefully, and when the sugar reaches the color you prefer, anywhere from deep honey color to a deep amber, immediately remove the pan from the heat and pour in the heavy cream.
- Add the pumpkin puree and spices, and whisk very well (still off the heat) to combine evenly.
- Return to the heat and boil for just about 15 seconds.
- Pour the caramel through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl, and add the butter and vanilla.
- Whisk to combine.
- Let cool and store in a jar in the fridge for up to 10 days.
- Ddepending on how you will use it, you may reheat the sauce or not.
Did You Make Any Changes?
Notes
Vvariations
- You can leave out the pumpkin puree altogether and increase the cream to 3/4 cup. Then you'll have a lovely pumpkin spice caramel without pumpkin in it.
- Swap out all cinnamon or all ginger for the pumpkin spice.
- Add some coffee extract or instant coffee to the sauce when you add the spices.
Nutrition
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
I really hope you love this dark caramel sauce. I love how it is packed with fall flavor.
Take care, and have a lovely day.
Hi, y’all! I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and hopefully also learned a thing or two.
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I was wondering if the 1 1/2 teaspoons of butter was supposed to be tablespoons? The 1 1/2 teaspoons just seems like such a small amount.
You are welcome to use 1 1/2 Tablespoons if you prefer. With more butter, the texture will be firmer in the fridge, but it will carry flavor nicely. Enjoy!
Your ooey gooey caramel is so good. I can’t wait to try this new flavor!