This vegan caramel sauce is so easy to make with only 3-ingredients. Perfect as a topping for ice cream or dessert and ready in 5 minutes.
This vegan caramel sauce is just ridiculously good.
It’s a wonderful sauce when warm, but when cooled in the fridge, it turns into fudge. So there’s that!
Whatever sauce you have left over you can pour into moulds and have it as fudge later or reheat and use it as a sauce again.
I think my favorite use for it is poured over ice cream.
But use it wherever you would use a caramel sauce. Pour it over pancakes or use it on your oatmeal or just eat it straight up with a spoon.
Also check out our fabulous vegan chocolate sauce recipe.
How to Make Vegan Caramel Sauce
You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.
- Making this is so easy it’s crazy.
- Melt coconut butter and add it to a bowl with maple syrup and vanilla extract and mix it together.
- And that’s it!
Top Tip: The most important part of this recipe is that it has to be coconut butter, it can’t be coconut oil or cocoa butter or cacao butter or any other type of butter you can think of, it has to be coconut butter or it won’t work. Make sure it clearly says ‘coconut butter’ on the jar.
How to Melt Coconut Butter
The easy way to melt coconut butter is just to stand the jar in a bowl of boiling hot water, then as it melts, take off the lid of the jar and give it a stir, put the lid back on and put the jar back in hot water again and then repeat until it’s all melted and well mixed.
You can’t just scoop coconut butter out of the top of the jar because it tends to separate when it cools and solidifies (like the oil at the top of a natural peanut butter or almond butter), so you need it all melted together and then stirred up properly.
How To Use Caramel Sauce
We’ve used this sauce as a filling for vegan chocolate caramels and as the caramel layer in some vegan snickers and vegan twix.
It’s also the caramel topping we used on our vegan cheesecake recipe.
The ice cream you see pictured here is our vegan ice cream and this sauce was just fabulous poured over the top.
Storing Tips
Store leftovers in a jar in the fridge and use within a week. It will set solidly in the fridge, so gently reheat by standing the jar in a bowl of hot water OR microwave it very briefly (10-15 seconds) to make it liquid and pourable again.
Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!
Vegan Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
- ¼ cup Coconut Butter (60ml) Melted
- ¼ cup Maple Syrup (60ml)
- ½ tsp Vanilla Extract
Instructions
- Melt the coconut butter by standing the sealed jar in a bowl of hot water. When the coconut butter is melted, mix it properly. This is because coconut butter often separates with the coconut oil section rising to the top. You want it to be properly mixed together.
- Measure out a quarter cup of coconut butter and place it into a bowl.
- Add the maple syrup and vanilla and stir well to combine.
- Pour over ice cream or whatever else needs a sauce!
- Keep in a sealed jar in the fridge and gently heat before use.
- Alternatively, pour any leftovers into moulds where it will set into a coconut fudge and enjoy it that way.
Notes
- It must be coconut butter, not cacao butter and definitely not coconut oil. Make sure the jar says ‘coconut butter’.
- Alternatives to maple syrup are date syrup (a syrup made entirely from dates) or agave nectar or golden syrup. Golden syrup has a wonderful caramel flavor already, so works really well here.
- The best way to reheat this sauce is to stand the jar in a bowl of hot water and let it heat that way or heat it very briefly in the microwave. Usually 10-15 seconds is enough to make it liquid and pourable again.
- Recipe adapted from The Vegan 8.
- This recipe was originally published in January 2017 but it has now been updated with new text and photos.
The first two times I made this, it was perfect and so delicious and creamy! Now when I stir in the syrup it turns into a crumble mess. Help! What am I doing wrong? Nothing fixed it- adding more sugar, adding more coconut butter, heating up. Nothing. It’s like a cruel joke. I haven’t done anything perceptibly different.
Hi Marisa, the coconut butter should be well mixed before you start. If your coconut butter separated and then wasn’t mixed properly, then that could possibly cause an issue.
hello! all of your recipes are to die for. I plan on using this caramel recipe for a candy bar i’m making. Does it solidify pretty well in room temperature? Also does it have a chewy texture?
Hi Sara, it works great for candy bars! Let it set in the fridge though and then if room temp is fairly cool then it will likely stay set. Check it out in our vegan snickers and vegan twix!
Can you re-melt this once it has set in the fridge, so that you can make in advance?
Hi Hannah, yes you can. If it’s in a jar you can just stand it in hot water to warm it up and melt it again, or you could warm it up a little in the microwave, whatever you prefer. If it’s warmed, then it will go back to a saucy consistency.
I have a question does the carmel taste like an old fashioned dairy and butter carmel or does ur vegan carmel taste like what ever syrup you put in it. If I used maple syrup would the carmel taste like coconut and maple syrup or does it actually taste like Carmel?
Hi Aveley, the flavors blend together so you don’t specifically taste ‘maple’ or ‘coconut’ you end up with a wonderful caramel flavor. But I also don’t think it’s the same as the dairy/sugar caramel. When it comes to that, I think a closer match would be the caramel sauce we made to top our vegan pumpkin cheesecake. All the best! 🙂
This is a very good recipe. I love that it doesn’t have any unhealthy ingredients in it and is so easy to make.
I mean if you’re not a ‘raw vegan’ then you probably are not worried about using a different syrup, but if you are raw vegan you probably want to use maple. Maple syrup is not actually strictly raw either but it’s often used in raw desserts whereas other syrups are not. This isn’t a raw food blog at all, but when we do make a recipe that is raw or close to raw we’ll say so.
Stellar!! Soooo delicious. Since I like my caramel with a salty tang I added a good pinch of sel gris. Perfect! Thank you for this yumminess! 🙂
Great idea! This definitely makes a good salted caramel! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Thanks for this recipe (I looooove caramel), but especially for listing alternatives for maple syrup. I cannot STAND the flavor of real maple syrup, and as a new vegan, I’ve been really worried that I’d never be able to eat sweets other than fruit again! I don’t know where to procure date honey or golden syrup, but I’ll Google it! 🙂
Hi Sara, I have updated the recipe to include links to the date honey and golden syrup, but you could actually use any syrup really, any syrup that you do like the taste of, I don’t think there is any syrup that wouldn’t work here, I have tried it with a bunch of different ones and it’s always great! 🙂
This is delicious!!! Easy too. I served it with sliced apples for my kids snack and they loved it. Thank you!!
Awesome! Perfect snack idea! 🙂
Anything else beside coconut butter you can substitute? Daughter has coconut allergy. Same question for date Carmel, got a substitute for coconut milk? Thanks
I think something very smooth like a cashew nut butter or macadamia nut butter would work here too. For the date caramel you can switch out the coconut for another non-dairy milk but it would work best if it was a ‘full-cream’ version of whatever milk you chose, so not a thin type of milk, more of a thick and creamy variety. Cashew nut milk would be great. Homemade would probably be even better as you can control for how creamy/rich you make it.
This on top of pancakes sounds like a delicious idea! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Simple and super