World’s Easiest Caramel for Life’s Busiest Bakers

For me, Christmas memories are sweet—full of reminiscences of my dad making fudge and my mom making date-roll candy, and these delicious little cookies. I don’t recall either of them ever making caramel, but the recipe below is so delicious and so easy that anyone can take a few minutes to create sweet Christmas memories of their own.


I got this recipe in a book—Delicious Conversations by Jennifer Griffith. Good book, delicious recipes. This caramel is so simple that anyone who knows how to measure and use a microwave can make it, and it’s as tasty as any homemade caramel I’ve ever had. I must admit though that I’m a pecan-a-holic. So, although this recipe doesn’t call for nuts—I chop them up and add them anyway.

Microwave Caramels

½ Cup of each of the following:

Melted butter

Brown sugar

White sugar

Light corn syrup

Sweetened condensed milk

Combine all ingredients and stir well, making sure there are no lumps of brown sugar. Microwave on high for 5—6 minutes (all microwaves vary). Do Not Stir.

Pour into greased 8”x8” dish. Cool and serve.

I add the ingredients into a large, glass mixing bowl and I have to smash all of the lumps from the brown sugar with a fork—mine always has lumps. In the microwave, the ingredients come to a boil and look like they’re going to boil over, but they haven’t yet. When it’s cooked for five minutes, the ingredients shrink into the bowl and continue to boil until the timer goes off. After bringing the bowl out of the microwave, I sprinkle the nuts over the top (without stirring) and then pour the hot caramel into the greased pan. Let cool and enjoy. An alternate method of adding nuts would be to sprinkle them into the bottom of the greased pan, or on top of the cooked caramel after it’s poured into the pan.

I was going to add pictures to this post because the finished caramel looks so pretty in the pan, but my computer thinks it has already received the pictures from my camera and won’t download them. I have the weirdest technology issues, but that’s a whole different story.