salted caramel sauce (from design sponge)

As you may know from my links page, I love home design blogs. I usually read them for decorating and DIY ideas for around the house, but often design blogs also delve into food. Apartment Therapy, for example, has the Kitchn section, where I've gotten plenty of recipes. Their vegan ones are often uninspired, but maybe that's only because I already read so many vegan blogs and own so many vegan cookbooks that I feel like I've seen it all. However, since I don't read many non-vegan food blogs, nor do I read many non-vegan cookbooks, I find them useful when it comes to finding new things to veganize.

This Salted Caramel recipe is an example of that. I found it on Design Sponge, a design/DIY/occasional recipe site.

The original recipes calls for lots of butter and cream. I used Earth Balance and some Mimicreme instead. It turned out great!

This caramel is thin at room temperature, but thickens to a sort of paste-y texture once stored in the fridge, so it should really be called Salted Caramel Sauce or Spread. Mine was a bit grainier than the one in the recipe, but that was entirely due to me allowing the sugar to crystalize (oops) while it was cooking, not due to veganizing.

One note about stirring melted sugar: the recipe warns not to overmix, or the sugar could crystalize. I have never had sugar crystalize on me until I read this warning and tried not to "overmix." By not stirring often, I found it crystalized much more than when I do my normal amount of (frequent) stirring. So if you are a beginner, ignore when it says not to overmix.

I served it with fruit slices to my omnivorous book club and they gobbled it up. I also drizzled it over chocolate cupcakes as a glaze, which was a wild success with my omnivorous coworkers--it doesn't taste like a veganized version of caramel--it just tastes like caramel. It would be delicious over ice cream, or spread over some dessert bread, maybe? Ohhhh man like a chocolate bread. I'm making myself hungry just thinking about it.

In other news, I know summer is really over... because my flower CSA share is coming to an end. But I still have some flower pictures to share with you!

The gladioli are always so gorgeous! But really hard to carry home with me on the T; I keep worrying I'll smack someone in the face with a flower.

Sometimes there are too many flowers to keep in one vase, which means I get to scatter them throughout our apartment! I love this delicate-looking (but long-lasting) purple flower. I don't know what kind it is though--anyone know?

I also love THESE expressive flowers! They remind me of brains, so I think of them as "brain flowers," though I'd love to know their real names.