Keto Caramel Sauce Recipe (With Dairy-Free Option)
By Carine Claudepierre
Published on 02/15/2021 - Last updated on 03/29/2024
This recipe may contain Amazon or other affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This Keto Caramel Sauce Recipe is made with only 4 ingredients to use as a keto coffee creamer or on top of keto desserts. This easy, thick, homemade sugar-free caramel syrup is also gluten-free, refined-sugar-free, and a dairy-free option is provided.
Bonus, it only has 0.3 grams of net carbs per tablespoon. So it can be used anytime without guilt.
Is Caramel Sauce Keto?
Most store-bought caramel sauces are not keto-friendly at all. They are typically made with sugar, glucose syrup, and golden syrup.
As a result, a classic caramel sauce contains about 60 grams of net carbs per 100 grams or 20 grams per serving.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
This sugar-free caramel syrup is a simple and versatile recipe:
- Ready In 20 Minutes
- 4 Simple Ingredients
- Egg-Free
- Gluten-Free
- Keto-Friendly
- Nut-Free
How To Make Keto Caramel Sauce
It is super easy to make keto caramel at home with only 4 simple ingredients.
Ingredients
All you need to make this sugar-free caramel syrup recipe are:
- Butter – I made the recipe with salted butter or unsalted butter, and both options work well. You can also use vegan butter like earth balance for a keto vegan caramel sauce.
- Golden sugar-free sweetener – I love to make keto caramel sauce with Swerve, but other brands work as well. The golden Swerve sweetener works better for this caramel recipe than the white version. It’s pure erythritol with a lovely golden color, and sticky texture like regular brown sugar but without carbs or calories. It creates the best keto caramel sauce with a dark brown color. For more on sweeteners, read my review of the best keto sweeteners.
- Heavy cream – or for a dairy-free option, use canned coconut cream or canned coconut milk. Always shake the can before measuring. If you are using vegan butter in this recipe, you must use coconut cream, not milk, or the caramel won’t thicken! Learn more about keto-friendly dairy products.
- Vanilla extract
Melting Ingredients
First, melt the butter in a small non-stick saucepan over medium heat.
Then, whisk in brown sugar-free sweetener and heavy cream. Whisk constantly until the sugar has fully dissolved.
Thickening
This keto sugar-free caramel sauce requires patience!
Bring the mixture to a gentle boil and cook for 6-8 minutes stirring a few times, until the liquid evaporates and the caramel volume has reduced by about a third.
Cooling Down
When the caramel sauce thickens and covers the back of a silicone spoon entirely, it’s time to stop the heat.
Cool the caramel sauce down for 15 minutes in the pan.
Then, transfer it into a glass mason jar.
Finally, when the caramel reaches room temperature, close the jar and store it in the fridge.
Keto Sweetener Choice
There are many other keto sweeteners you can use to make your sugar-free caramel sauce. However, keep in mind that each keto sweetener has different properties.
Some melt faster, like xylitol, and some like erythritol will never turn brown.
So to make a brown keto caramel that thickens easily, you must use golden erythritol or golden erythritol/monk fruit blend.
Other sweeteners like xylitol or allulose will work, but your caramel will never darken as much.
Storage Instructions
You must store caramel sauce in a fridge. In fact, caramel sauce contains butter and cream, and it must be placed in a sealed glass jar in the fridge.
You can store this perfect caramel sauce for up to 4 days in the fridge.
Freezing caramel sauce
If you have too much caramel sauce, freeze it in an ice cube tray. Place one tablespoon of caramel in each hole, cover the tray with foil, and freeze.
Thaw one cube at a time 2 hours before serving or microwave the frozen caramel to thaw and use quickly.
You can also add frozen caramel ice cubes to thicken keto smoothie recipes or into hot coffee as a coffee creamer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Can I Do With Keto Caramel Sauce?
This is the perfect keto caramel sauce to use as a:
- Coffee creamer – add 1 tablespoon of this caramel sauce to your hot coffee. Bring everything in a blender and blend for 20 seconds to create a milky keto caramel coffee. You can also use a hand milk frother to blend coffee and caramel sauce directly into the coffee mug.
- Dessert topping – drizzle this keto caramel onto raspberry crumble bars, keto ice creams, keto pound cake, or floating island dessert.
- Pancake syrup – drizzle on top of my keto pancake recipe, keto waffles, or keto crepes.
- Keto smoothie syrup – add a tablespoon into my keto peanut butter smoothie or keto Frappuccino to add a lovely caramel flavor. Even better, add it frozen to thicken your keto smoothie!
Can I Make Dairy-Free Keto Caramel Sauce?
You can use this recipe to make a keto vegan caramel sauce too. To do so, replace:
- Butter by vegan butter. Don’t use vegan spread. It’s made of vegetable oils, and these are not approved for a keto diet. The best brands are Naturli and Earth Balance.
- Heavy cream by canned coconut cream or canned coconut milk. Careful coconut milk caramel sauce doesn’t thicken as much as coconut cream caramel! You need as much fat as possible to get a thick dairy-free caramel. Therefore, canned coconut cream works the best. Always shake the can before opening and measuring.
How Many Carbs Are In Sugar-Free Caramel?
Since sugar alcohols are not counted as carbs on a keto diet, you only get 0.3 grams of net carbs in this keto caramel sauce per tablespoon.
Why Has My Keto Caramel Sauce Hardened?
Caramel sauce always hardens when stored in a cold place. That’s normal, and this is not a problem.
To thin out your homemade keto caramel, bring the jar in the microwave for 20 seconds.
Otherwise, get into a saucepan and rewarm until liquid and easy to pour on keto pancake recipe or keto ice creams.
If your caramel is too thick for your liking, add 1-2 tablespoons of cold water to the saucepan.
Stir and rewarm until the caramel reaches the best consistency.
Why Has My Caramel Sauce Split?
If you boil your caramel sauce at a too-high temperature, the caramel can separate. Usually, you can fix that by:
- Reducing to medium heat to reach a light boil.
- Stirring in a few tablespoons of cold water into a caramel.
How Do I Know My Caramel Is Ready?
Making your homemade keto-friendly caramel sauce is pure science. A thick caramel is simply a reduced sweet sauce that is lightly boiled for 6-8 minutes.
The trick to making the best thick keto caramel sauce is to stir occasionally to let the liquid evaporate slowly. The less movement you add to the mixture, the faster it thickens.
More Keto Staple Recipes
I love to create my own keto staples for breakfast or to serve on top of my keto dessert recipes.
Below I listed other delicious keto staple recipes you may want to try as well:
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Keto Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup Unsalted butter use salted if you intend to make the salted caramel sauce.
- ½ cup Golden Crystal Sweetener or Golden Swerve
- ½ cup Heavy Cream or canned coconut milk. Shake can before use!
- ¼ teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Instructions
- In a small non-stick saucepan, over low-medium heat, melt the butter.
- Add in golden sugar-free sweetener and heavy cream and whisk constantly and gently with a fork until the sugar-free sweetener has dissolved.
- Bring to a gentle boil and cook for 6-8 minutes, occasionally stirring with a wooden spoon. No metal spoon! It would cool down the caramel and would split it!
- Be patient, don't stir too often, the liquid will evaporate, and the caramel will thicken slowly. You know it's ready when the caramel volume has reduced by about a third, and it covers the back of the spoon. Note that the caramel will thicken even more when cooling down, so it's normal if it doesn't look as thick as in my pictures.
- Remove from heat and add vanilla extract.
- Cool 15 minutes in the saucepan, then transfer to a sealed glass mason jar.
- Store up to 3 days in the fridge or freeze in single portions in an ice cube tray.
How to store caramel sauce?
- The caramel will thicken in the fridge, and that's normal. To thin out your caramel, bring the glass jar a few seconds in the microwave, stir and use on top of keto desserts, keto coffee, or keto ice creams.
- Thaw in a small bowl for 2 hours before serving.
How to fix hardened caramel?
- If your keto caramel becomes too hard as it cools or after stored in the fridge, you can rewarm in a microwave-safe bowl for 20 seconds or put it back in a non-stick saucepan pan. If still too thick or caramel separate, add 1-2 tablespoons of cold water in the pan, stir, heat over medium to try to save the caramel.
Tools
Getting Started What Is Keto? Macro Calculator Sweetener Converter Meal Plans Recipe Ebooks Intermittent Fasting Keto Fruits Keto Vegetables Keto Flours Fighting Keto Flu Healthy SweetenersWant My Kitchen Equipment?
About The Author
Hi, I'm Carine, the food blogger, author, recipe developer, published author of a cookbook and many ebooks, and founder of Sweet As Honey.
I have an Accredited Certificate in Nutrition and Wellness obtained in 2014 from Well College Global (formerly Cadence Health). I'm passionate about sharing all my easy and tasty recipes that are both delicious and healthy. My expertise in the field comes from my background in chemistry and years of following a keto low-carb diet. But I'm also well versed in vegetarian and vegan cooking since my husband is vegan.
I now eat a more balanced diet where I alternate between keto and a Mediterranean Diet
Cooking and Baking is my true passion. In fact, I only share a small portion of my recipes on Sweet As Honey. Most of them are eaten by my husband and my two kids before I have time to take any pictures!
All my recipes are at least triple tested to make sure they work and I take pride in keeping them as accurate as possible.
Browse all my recipes with my Recipe Index.
I hope that you too find the recipes you love on Sweet As Honey!
Disclaimer
The recipes, instructions, and articles on this website should not be taken or used as medical advice. You must consult with your doctor before starting on a keto or low-carb diet. The nutritional data provided on Sweetashoney is to be used as indicative only.
The nutrition data is calculated using WP Recipe Maker. Net Carbs is calculated by removing the fiber and some sweeteners from the total Carbohydrates. As an example, a recipe with 10 grams of Carbs per 100 grams that contains 3 grams of erythritol and 5 grams of fiber will have a net carbs content of 2 grams. Some sweeteners are excluded because they are not metabolized.
You should always calculate the nutritional data yourself instead of relying on Sweetashoney's data. Sweetashoney and its recipes and articles are not intended to cure, prevent, diagnose, or treat any disease. Sweetashoney cannot be liable for adverse reactions or any other outcome resulting from the use of recipes or advice found on the Website.
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Your recipe for Keto caramel sauce looks great. I do have a question. Can I replace the Golden Crystal Sweetener with Honey powder or Stevia powder? Can I replace the Heavy cream/canned coconut milk with Vanilla milk?
I am not familiar with honey powder, but I am sure that pure stevia powder won’t work.
Wanted to thank-you for your recipe; worked out well. I used allulose (Splenda) and added an 1/8th of teaspoon of molasses for color. I also used coconut cream as a substitute for whipping cream and cooked for full 8 minutes with temp @ 244 degrees.
All in all it tasted great.
I look forward to trying your other recipes.
The flavor is pretty good, but I am wondering how you keep it from crystalizing. I’ve been using alternative natural sweeteners for years and have never been able to get erythritol sweeteners, like Swerve to not crystalize when cooled. I was leery of it when I saw Swerve, but wanted to follow the recipe, and of course, it crystalized just while cooling which is a very unpleasant texture. Short of heating it up, as I was not intending to use it for hot uses, what do you recommend? Do I just need to just redo the whole thing with Allulose, which is like the only one I have found so far to not do that? I hate to waste it all.
I haven’t made this yet but it sounds delicious. I cannot use dairy free creamer anymore because of allergy to “natural flavor” and vanilla. My question is; can you use ghee butter and no vanilla?
I never cook with ghee but it should work. The vanilla is only for flavor so yes you can skip it!
Do you know or think that you could use this to make carmel creamer. Or do u have a keto flavored creamer recipe? Love your posts btw thank you and keep them coming.
Yes as mentioned in the post above you can add this as a coffee creamer in coffee, I like to blend my coffee or use a milk frother to dissolve the caramel in it and create a frothier texture
Hi, if I don’t have golden erythritol, can I just use food coloring?
You don’t have to add any coloring, the caramel will simply be lighter in color
Do you mean the ‘brown’ swerve? I can’t find ‘golden’ swerve.
Yes, some brand call it it brown like swerve, lakanto call it golden, both works well here
Thank you Carine, your sweet recipes excite me as they are so easy
I have a question because one of my favourites is your Lime Pie. Have you any more lime recipes as I have limes ripening and need more ideas
Not yet, I will work on a cheesecake soon 🙂