This easy caramel sauce is great on waffles, ice cream, pancakes and biscuits!

A few months ago, my daughter got on a waffle kick. Our waffle iron was seldom used previously, but she changed that up. While she tried a few different recipes before finding the made-from-scratch waffle recipe she loves most, we found a topping recipe that was a keeper from the start. We first made this easy caramel sauce with bananas in it. But then we got creative with it as well. It’s so good and so incredibly easy, you can whip it up in minutes to kick up breakfast or dessert a notch!

The first time I made the easy caramel sauce, I marveled at how easy it was and wondered why I’d never tried something like it before. Had something so simple been out there and I’d been ignorant of it for years?! What I love most is that you only need a few common ingredients to make this sauce.

We have used the sauce for waffle topping the most, since my daughter has been on a waffle kick, but you could use it for so many things. It would be DELICIOUS on anything from ice cream to pancakes to biscuits. Heck, you could totally eat it by itself. I’m way more chocolate fan than caramel, but even I think this easy caramel sauce is the best. I pretty much burn my mouth every time we make it because I don’t want to wait to eat it!

Variations on the sauce

We have tried this sauce with bananas, apples and pecans. Of them, bananas have remained our favorite. Apples did OK, but didn’t get as soft as we would have liked. Maybe they need to cook longer? The pecans were quite yummy, too, though!

You could also make this easy caramel sauce without any fruit and enjoy just the hot caramel by itself. In fact, if it were just me, that’s probably what I’d do.

A few simple ingredients

Not counting the fruit or nuts, this easy caramel sauce has only two ingredients. Counting the fruit or nuts, it still just puts the ingredients’ list at three (unless you want to combine multiple fruit or nuts, which would totally work, too!). You could try a banana pecan or walnut caramel sauce, in fact.

But, I digress. All you need is butter and brown sugar. We use salted butter, because that’s what we usually have on hand, but I think unsalted butter would work just as well. If you use unsalted butter and find the sauce too sweet, add a pinch of salt to it when you add the brown sugar.

Get cooking

Get out a medium-sized skillet and melt 4 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Be sure to move your butter around every so often so it doesn’t burn. Nobody likes the taste of burnt butter! While your butter is melting, make sure any add-in ingredients are prepped. Slice bananas, chop nuts, cut up apples. I do that right next to the stovetop, so I can keep an eye on my butter at the same time.

When your butter looks like this, you’re ready to move on to the next step:

Next, add in 1 cup of brown sugar. I used light brown sugar, but I think dark brown sugar would work as well.

Continue cooking the butter and brown sugar over medium heat, stirring often. It will start to come together like this:

Let it cook another minute or two longer until it is well combined and more sauce consistency.

Place the sliced bananas in the pan and leave the heat on medium.

Gently stir the bananas into the sauce and cook over medium heat until the bananas are softened and the sauce is more liquid-y, about 2 or 3 minutes.

Serve it warm over whatever you are making. We love it on fluffy, homemade waffles! It is so yummy. Just be careful not to burn your mouth because you can’t wait to eat it!