Welcome to the best dairy free caramel sauce you’ll ever make! Not as rich as your typical caramel sauce since it is made entirely with coconut milk, this Coconut Caramel still tastes delicious with that deep caramelized flavor and a hint of tropical coconut.
Growing up Vietnamese, coconut sauce is pretty much a staple garnishing on so many desserts. These days, it is just my favorite thing to drizzle over banana bread french toast. You can think of this coconut caramel sauce as its caramelized cousin! It is wonderful served on top of coconut french toast bake. You can use it in caramel frosting or even make pecan sticky buns with it.
Trang’s Recipe Highlights
- FLAVOR: a lighter caramel sauce with a hint of coconut.
- TEXTURE: smooth, glossy and pourable, a little bit more translucent than a typical caramel sauce made with dairy cream and butter.
- EASE: This coconut milk caramel recipe is completely fail-proof! While it can be a tiny bit tricky to get just the right amount of caramelization, my step-by-step instructions are beginner friendly.
Alright, let me show you what it takes to make this sauce come true!
The ingredients
You’ll need just 5 ingredients to make this coconut caramel sauce, see picture 👇. As always, for the full list of ingredients with quantities and step-by-step instructions, skip straight to the recipe card.
Do I have to use corn syrup?
You don’t have to use corn syrup, but it is the fail-proof ingredient that helps keep your caramel sauce from crystallizing. So you can attempt to make this recipe without corn syrup but I’m telling you now, learn from my mistake and make life easier on yourself, just get a small bottle of corn syrup to avoid the heartache and the crytallized mess that could happen without it.
Note that corn syrup is not the same as high fructose corn syrup! Corn syrup is a simple sugar (glucose), made by breaking down corn starch. Whereas, high fructose corn syrup is made by further processing corn syrup and converting some of the glucose into fructose, increasing its sweetness, which makes it cheaper to use in commercially processed food and drinks.
What brand of coconut milk to use?
You can use either coconut milk or coconut cream for this recipe. I tested it with a number of brands, they all work fine. I typically use Thai Kitchen for most of my coconut recipes because it has the least amount of added ingredients and it tastes the best.
As far as coconut cream goes, the only brand I found that you can separate the cream from the liquid is Sprouts brand coconut cream/milk. Refrigerate the can and you can scoop the top cream out leaving the liquid behind. I used the top cream in this recipe hoping for a richer coconut caramel, but it didn’t really make a difference in taste.
Why use fine salt?
I found that the larger grains of salt tend to sink to the bottom of the jar once you transfer the caramel sauce to a jar for storage. So I use fine salt to allow it to dissolve into the caramel sauce a little bit more evenly.
You can use fine sea salt or if you have a pestle and mortar, just crush up whatever salt you have. I used finely crushed kosher salt here.
Should I add coconut extract?
Like I mentioned earlier, this coconut caramel has a very light hint of coconut. You may be tempted to use coconut extract to enhance the coconut flavor. I would recommend against it because I think it makes the caramel taste a bit artificial. I tried it, didn’t like it, so you don’t have to try it.
Pay attention to the caramel color
Like I mentioned in my miso caramel recipe, I burnt the caramel more than a few times during testing. I kept trying to acheive a deep amber color while caramelizing the sugar but ended up burning it instead. The trick is to get the sugar to just a light amber color, because when you tilt the pan, it is actually already a deep amber.
You also have to remember that caramel will continue to cook when you take it off the heat. See the side-by-side photo below. I took this off the heat to take a few photos and keep swirling the pan around for about 1 minute, and the caramel kept getting darker.
Additional variation and testing notes
I wrote this recipe to be dairy free, and vegan friendly, using just coconut milk. But if you miss the buttery taste of a typical caramel sauce, you can swap some of the coconut milk for unsalted butter. I made this version with 2 oz of butter and ¼ cup of coconut milk. It makes for a delicious buttery caramel sauce but it’s hard to detect the hint of coconut.
Also, cold coconut caramel – the nondairy version – will change color in the refrigerator. I think because the oil separates from the mixture making it look a bit grainy. This is totally okay, there is nothing wrong with it. All you need to do is warm it up and stir to bring it back to a smooth consistency.
Hungry for more?
Coconut Milk Caramel Recipe
Equipment
- Stainless steel pan
Ingredients
- ¾ cup (150 g) granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoon (40 g) corn syrup
- 2 tablespoon (30 g) water
- ½ cup (120 g) coconut milk, or just the top cream
- ¼ teaspoon fine salt
Instructions
- Caramelize the sugar – Add granulated sugar, corn syrup and water to a heavy bottom stainless steel pan. Heat the mixture over medium heat without stirring. You can swirl the pan occasionally to ensure all the sugar melts and heats evenly. When the liquid turns amber, take it off the heat. This could take around 10-15 minutes, more or less, depending on the strength of your burner.¾ cup granulated sugar, 2 tablespoon corn syrup, 2 tablespoon water
- Add the coconut milk – Once you take the caramel off the heat, immediately add the coconut milk and whisk to combine. The mixture will bubble rapidly as the cool coconut milk combines with the hot caramel. Keep whisking until smooth.½ cup coconut milk
- Stir in salt – Sprinkle in the fine salt and stir to incorporate.¼ teaspoon fine salt
- Cool – Transfer warm caramel to a heat proof jar for storage and allow it to cool. Caramel will thicken further as it cools.
Notes
- Storage: you can store coconut caramel in the refrigerator for up to 1 month and in the freezer for up to 3 months.
- Warm before using: caramel thickens as it cools so warm it up in the microwave in short bursts, stir in between, until you get the desired consistency before using.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like this recipe? Rate & comment below!
