Gluten Free Caramel Sauce Recipe - Simply So Healthy (2024)

This recipe makes a low-carb caramel sauce in less than 15 minutes. It’s perfect to drizzle over ice cream or add to any dessert. No black strap molasses required! Yes, it tastes like the real thing, looks like the real thing and is gooey like the real thing, but it works for people on low-carb, keto,diabetic, Banting or Atkins diets.

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The Recipe

This low-carb caramel sauce is everything a caramel sauce should be–sweet, sticky, syrupy, buttery goodness. It’s perfect to drizzle over all kinds of treats, but quite frankly, for me, this caramel doesn’t need to be combined with anything–I could just sit down with a bowl of it and eat it with a spoon. Then again, who needs a spoon!

The Inspiration

Autumn is all aboutcaramel. I see recipes with caramel everywhere. I love caramel combined with the flavors of pumpkin, nuts, coffee, and chocolate? Yum! I have been craving caramel for a few months now–dreaming about it actually. This craving has made creating a low carb caramel sauce recipe a priority for me.

The Update

I’m so grateful that I have a chance to update this recipe this week. I loved the way the recipe turned out before, but I realized recently that one of the sweeteners elevated my blood sugar. While it may not affect everyone this way, I suspect that if it elevates my blood sugar, there is a good chance it elevates the blood sugar in other people. Because of this, I’m working to remove that specific sweetener from my recipes.

In addition, the older recipe used a bit of black strap molasses for color and flavor. I had to do this because erythritol doesn’t caramelize like real sugar. While the tiny amount I used didn’t add a significant number of carbs, I did get complaints because it shows up on the many bloggers lists of non-keto ingredients as a large amount of molasses would indeed keep someone out of ketosis.

The tiny amount that I used would not cause this problem in the vast majority of those who eat keto, but, now there are better sweeteners out there and they do caramelize like table sugar.

The Best Sweetener for Keto Caramel Sauce

I’ve made several batches or caramel sauce when I reworked this recipe. I’ve tried erythritol in the past and found that it had two major problems. First of all, it doesn’t brown or caramelize. This, becomes a big problem as you can’t make caramel at all if you use only this sweetener.

While I was able to solve this issue by adding a tiny bit of molasses, and created caramel, the second problem showed up. This problem has to do with the solubility of erythritol. It loves to crystalize out of solution.

In the past, I used a fiber syrup to help keep the caramel flowing. It would still harden in the refrigerator, but worked great if you reheated it.

I did try the sweetener BochaSweet, and found that, like erythritol, it didn’t caramelize well either. It did make a wonderful caramel sauce with a wonderful texture and flavor, but I did need to add 1/2 teaspoon of blackstrap molasses to create the sauce.

The idea to try allulose came from Carolyn at All Day I Dream About Food. She had mentioned using it to make caramels in a post on Facebook. I decided to try it out and found that allulose caramelized beautifully.

In this recipe, I used half Pyure and half allulose. Allulose is expensive, so using half Pyure cuts down on the cost. Also, some people (actually, I only know of one) find that allulose causes digestive problems. Using a smaller amount makes this less likely. I am very sensitive to a lot of sweeteners, but find that allulose is very safe for me and I was eating this caramel by the spoonful, so I gave it a pretty good test.

How to make Keto Caramel sauce

Making Keto-friendly caramel sauce is super easy. It does go really fast, so I like to have my ingredients measured out before I start. This way you won’t burn the caramel while you’re looking for something.

First you dissolve the sweeteners in a small amount of water in a 2 quart sauce pan over medium heat.

While the sweeteners are dissolving, you will want to stir the mixture frequently. Once it’s dissolved, you need to stop stirring and swirl the ingredients to keep them moving by moving the pan. You do this until the mixture turns deep golden brown. Be careful not to go too far and burn the ingredients.

Next, you’ll turn down the heat to low and whisk the butter into the mixture. After the butter is added, you’ll want to slowly whisk in the cream and bring the mixture back to a simmer.

How to store caramel sauce

I store this caramel sauce in the refrigerator in an airtight container.

This low-carb caramel sauce stays pourable after being refrigerated. Some of the erythritol may crystalize out. If that bothers you, simply heat it gently to restore it to perfectly smooth gooey goodness.

How to serve caramel sauce

I’ll be honest, I’m a big fan of scooping this caramel out of the jar and eating it by the spoonful. If you’re more normal than I am, you might want to poor some over keto vanilla ice cream, use it instead of syrup over my low-carb banana pancakes, pumpkin waffles, or almond flour waffles. It would be great added to coffee or over carrot cake.

However you enjoy this caramel sauce, I hope you love it as much as I do. Enjoy!

-Annissa