Better Than Sex Vegan Rum Caramel Sauce

So, one of the major bummers about a milk allergy is no more caramel. Or at least no more store bought candy with caramel.  And I miss that.  So by adapting a recipe that was used to make sticky buns, we developed this caramel.  The first thing we used it for was to dump over a cake as shown above. (We’re not giving you the recipe for the cake because it wasn’t very good cake.  Although I’m convinced that I could eat cardboard if this sauce was on it.)

It’s also very good on fruit.  And might have been prettier to show you if I had remembered to pick up apples, but that didn’t happen.

I tried to be artistic with the fruit photo but it didn’t work out.  Don’t shoot me, I’m an adult coping with food allergies, not a photographer Jim! (Yes, that was a gratuitous Star Trek reference, I’m ashamed of myself as well.)  But back to the subject at hand, this freaking unbelievable caramel sauce.  So in trying to figure out what I could use it for to take pretty pictures for you guys, and after Mary Kate and I had fun playing with the Vegan Creme Filled Chocolate Egg recipe a couple of weeks ago, I got my hands on some skull molds.  Halloween is coming, people.  And if I could have a caramel filled candy, (miss MISS Rolos) then all would be right with the world.  Sort of.  In an overblown and dramatic first world way. So *drumroll*, I made myself some skulls filled with caramel.

So to begin, first the sauce. (Although if you’re going to use this for the skulls and/or other molded chocolate, do the skulls first and get them all ready.  It’ll make it much easier.)

Better than Sex Vegan Rum Caramel Sauce

• 1 ½ cups of firmly packed dark brown sugar
• ½ cup Earth Balance Soy Free Vegan margarine
• 6 Tablespoons of real maple syrup
• 2 Tablespoons of dark corn syrup
• 1 Tablespoon of vanilla
• 2 Tablespoons of Goslings Dark Seal Rum
  

Place all ingredients in sauce pan.

Stir ingredients over low-medium heat and stir until all ingredients dissolve.

Sauce will thicken and it is ready when it coats the back of a metal spoon and drips off it in long slow drips. Do not let it get too hot or have it on the heat for too long or it will begin to sugar back out. Ask me how I know.

To make skulls, there’s a full explanation at the recipe for the  Vegan Creme Filled Chocolate Egg, but I used:

• 1 2/3 cup(s) of Vegan chocolate chips, more or less depending on size and thickness of chocolate shells

Place chocolate chips and shortening in double boiler. Melt over low to medium heat and mix thoroughly.

You then paint the molds with the chocolate, place them in the freezer until hard and repeat until you have a thick enough chocolate layer.  To do these skulls, I repeated the process 4-5 times.

Once the molds are complete and the caramel is cool enough, you need to fill the cavities with caramel. Place the molds back in the freezer until they are completely cold.

Once they are completely cold remove them from the molds.  I used chocolate as glue to stick the skull halves  together and then put them back in the molds in the freezer until they cemented together.  Voila!