I remember the time before salted caramel. In 2007 when I started this blog it certainly wasn’t mainstream, but as one decade bloomed into the next it really took hold of everyone – first it was thrilling, then ubiquitous, and now it’s simply the norm – expected, even. It’s genuinely unusual to see the word “caramel” now without the word “salted” preceding it and I imagine in years to come it will be one of the ways that we’ll culinarily define the 2010s. I definitely bought into its popularity, and would make sure that salted caramel-related recipes made it onto my blog semi-regularly in the hopes that it would garner some of that attention. I mean, I really, really love caramel, but I was absolutely trying to capitalise on the fact that everyone else did too. That’s showbiz, kid!

Despite salted caramel now being a settled sovereign – to quote the most recent season of The Crown – its still has the power to make me feel that early 2010’s frisson of excitement. For example, this salted pineapple caramel sauce. The recipe has, I grant you, major overlap with my last blog post where I used pineapple juice as the base of a vegan lemon curd. This time around however, there’s no scientific hypothesising that brought it about – I had pineapple on the brain and simply thought it would be super cool to put it in a caramel sauce recipe. Occam’s Delicious Razor!

It works beautifully: pineapple has, as I’ve established, an inherent yet elusive buttery roundedness to it, which really comes into its prime when you simmer it with brown sugar. There’s cornflour to thicken it and a little coconut oil but this ends up tasting so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s rich, and juicy, and luscious – awash with tropical fruitiness yet still somehow purely, vigorously caramelly.

Salted Pineapple Caramel Sauce

A recipe by myself

• 1 cup/250ml pineapple juice (bottled is perfect, but make sure it’s as close to 100% actual pineapple juice as possible)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 4 teaspoons cornflour
• 1/3 cup soy milk, or similar
• 2 heaped tablespoons refined coconut oil
• salt, to taste – at least three or four pinches seems to do the trick

Bring the pineapple juice and sugar to the boil in a small saucepan, and let it bubble away for two minutes – as in, wait for two entire minutes to pass on the clock – stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat.

Mix the cornflour and soy milk together, making sure no lumps of cornflour remain. Tip this into the pan along with the coconut oil and return to a low heat, stirring it briskly until the mixture thickens to a good saucy level. Remove from the heat and stir in a couple of pinches of salt – you may want to add more later, but it helps to wait till it has cooled so you can taste test.

Transfer into a clean jar. Store in the fridge. Makes around 300ml.

Pour it over ice cream, serve it with slices of pineapple for symbiotically dipping into, fold it into buttercream, use it to fill miniature tartlets or your cupped hands. It’s so delicious.

You might also consider: the Black Salted Caramel recipe I posted last year, which uses tahini and golden syrup to make a dense and intense sauce that’s very different to this one, but no less excellent.

title from: The Recognition Scene by The Mountain Goats, a melancholy song about robbing a candy shop that is probably a metaphor for something bigger. I love metaphors for something bigger!

music lately:

Turkey Lurkey Time from the musical Promises, Promises, as performed at the 1969 Tony Awards. It’s my Christmas tradition to save watching this video till December of each year and while I’ve kind of backed myself into a corner with this – it feels increasingly momentous because I’ve made it so – every year I am smacked about the head by its power. I’ve watched it five times today alone and every time it’s brought tears to my eyes. Which, if you click through, and I urge you to, might seem odd when the song is clearly deeply stupid, but the dancing – the dancing! Michael Bennett’s bonkers choreography, and Donna McKechnie in the red dress whipping her neck back and forth like new spinal cords are mass-produced and easy to install, Baayork Lee’s exuberance and high kicks, and the fact that they’re also singing the entire time, and that diagonal sequence at the end where they’re all running at each other high kicking recklessly, it gives me absolute chills. I truly implore you to watch this, it starts a little mild but at around 1:30 Donna starts really exploring the upper limits of her neck flexibility and it just spirals wildly from there.

Young Liars, TV On The Radio. That slow, persistent waltz drum beat and that fuzzy, hypnotically droning melody that rises and rises like a tide coming in! I love this.

I Can Only Give You Everything, MC5. Such a menacingly sultry guitar riff, such a salient title, such scuzzy distortion.

Next time: you know what else happens in December – it’s time for my annual round up of recipes that can potentially make edible gifts!!

PS: if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me directly, you can do so by joining my Patreon. It’s like a cordoned-off VIP area where you can access content written just for you: recipes, updates, the opening sentences of the novel I wrote.