Salted Caramel (on Apple Pie Bars)

I've wanted to make salted caramel for a while now ... actually, I wanted to replicate a salted caramel, black licorice ice cream that I had tried in Halifax a few years ago. But I'm not quite there yet.

Going through my cold room, I found a couple of jars of "apple pie filling" that I made a while back.  It was made with some butter in the recipe and, at the time, I was worried as I had never canned anything with butter and I was concerned it might spoil easier than my usual canned veggies - but not so as it was quite perfect when I opened the jars.  And perfect to go with the caramel!

I used the crumble base from the Irish Apple Shortbread Pie that I often make and spread it into an 8x13 pan (and saved a bit for the top), topped it with two 500 ml jars of my canned apple pie filling, then drizzled the top with this luscious salted caramel.  Mmmmm.

So maybe use your favourite apple pie filling or just slice some apples with a bit of cinnamon and sugar.  Put it on top of a shortbread base, puff pastry or just make an apple pie and top with the salted caramel.  I think you'll like it ....

I halved the salted caramel recipe from browneyedbaker.com.  But it's pretty similar to most I've seen.  I used kosher salt instead of fleur de sel - just because.  Truthfully, maybe I should have used fleur de sel.  I use kosher salt when I make brownies and I always get the odd bite with a nice tasty chunk of salt.  But with the caramel, it all just kind of blended in.

And everything came right out of the fridge so not room temperature as described in the recipe as other recipes used the ingredients cold (and I simply didn't want to wait).  It just means the mixture flares up a bit when adding cold ingredients into the hot mixture - so just keep stirring!

Ingredients:
1 cup granulated sugar
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2  cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon kosher salt

It would be best to reference another recipe for the method as I'm pretty new at this but it was very easy to make.  Just stir the sugar in a pan on medium heat until it turns an amber colour and all of the clumps have melted.  Add the butter (if cold, the mixture will flare up a bit) and stir until melted and mixture has thickened a bit and has started to bubble.  Add cream (flare again), remove from heat and stir until smooth.  Allow to cool a bit before adding salt.

Make sure both the apple bars and the caramel are cooled to room temperature then drizzle (or pour!) it on.  The caramel will thicken quite a bit when put in the fridge and won't be "pourable" anymore.