When you hear Buttermilk Syrup, you still probably think about maple syrup. This syrup is amazing because it can be used similar to a maple syrup on breakfast recipes from pancakes to waffles to crepes, but it’s also my go-to caramel sauce for desserts like ice cream and cheesecake and makes an incredible gift, all wrapped up in a cute mason jar. The flavor is incredibly well rounded and it lends itself well to so many different uses. It’s also a great use for leftover buttermilk, if you bought a container for a single recipe (like my Buttermilk Ranch Dressing) and now don’t know what to do with the rest! Once you learn how easy this is to make, it will become a household staple!
Ingredient and Equipment List
- Buttermilk – I don’t recommend buttermilk substitutes in this recipe, and I haven’t tried it with powdered buttermilk. I like to use real buttermilk, though low or full fat is just fine.
- Butter – I use real, salted, butter. If you use unsalted butter, you’ll want to add a little extra salt to the sauce to balance out the flavor.
- Sugar – Use regular white granulated sugar.
- Corn Syrup – Corn syrup is an important ingredient because it prevents the sauce from crystallizing.
- Baking Soda – Baking soda is important because it reacts with the acidic ingredients and helps with the sauce’s texture.
- Vanilla – Vanilla adds flavor to the finished caramel sauce.
Instructions
- Combine buttermilk, butter, sugar, corn syrup, and baking soda in a large pot.
- Heat and stir to combine all ingredients and then bring to a low simmer.
- Continue to simmer until the mixture turns deep golden in color.
- Let cool to warm and stir to smooth.
Store in an airtight container in the fridge. You can heat in the microwave to warm up.
Your sauce will probably start to get a little grainy and crystallize before it goes bad. Eat up up in 3-4 days for best results.
No, this recipe is not designed for canning. If you gift it in a mason jar, make sure the recipient knows to just keep it in the fridge. TIP: Sometimes after this sauce sits unused for a day or two, it will get a little crystallized (but still tastes amazing!) Testers have found adding an extra tablespoon or so of corn syrup helps with this. If you plan to gift this buttermilk caramel, you may want to try that.
Buttermilk Syrup
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
- 1 1/2 cup sugar
- 8 Tablespoons 1 stick real butter
- 2 tablespoons corn syrup
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Combine buttermilk, sugar, butter, corn syrup, and baking soda in a LARGE pot. Like one you'd make soup in. Yes, you'll have way more pot than ingredients but this will boil all over your newly-cleaned stove if you put it in a smaller saucepan.
- Bring ingredients to a boil and reduce heat to low (as long as it's still bubbling, you're okay). Cook, stirring very frequently, for 8-9 minutes. You're basically making candy here and candy-making requires constant vigilance.
- When it's done, it should take on a golden-brown color. Remove from heat and add vanilla.
- There will be foam on top. As it cools a little, just keep stirring and the foam will subside.
Questions & Reviews
I’ve made this recipe many times and it has always turned out perfect. However, one of my daughters is very lactose intolerant (even 1 t of butter gives her severe stomach pains) and I really wanted a caramel fondue for NYE so I tweaked this recipe as follows: subbed lactose free milk with a splash of vinegar (and let it sit for several minutes) and used Smart Balance instead of real butter. I followed the rest of the recipe as written. At room temp, it was still too runny to be fondue but would have been great for pancakes. I put it in the fridge and it thickened beautifully and was perfect for fondue. For anyone afraid of substitutions or if you have lactose issues, this recipe is very forgiving.
If allergic to corn (and thus corn syrp) how would this recipe react to just delete the corn syrup? Or substitute it with something else?
Mine was perfect during cooking but turned out grainy once it cooled. I can heat it and it turns syrup-y, but again, soon as it cools it gets grainy. Can you help me figure out what I did wrong? Thanks!
I accidentally left this out overnight… do you think it’s gone bad? I’m so bummed because it was soo good!
I made your Buttermilk Caramel Syrup today and it was so good and I just wanted to thank you. I made pancakes and had some ham that I even put a little of the syrup on.
This is amazing! I literally had to keep myself from drinking it…. Thank you:) !
I LOVE this stuff. Amazingly delicious and easy. I made some the other night with apple cinnamon oatmeal pancakes and it was such a mind-blowing combination I just had to share. Here is the pancake recipe I used: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/brown-sugar-oatmeal-pancakes but I tweaked it a bit by adding about a cup of shredded tart-sweet apple (I think it was braeburn) and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon and reducing the brown sugar to a scant 1/4 c. So, so good. I highly recommend it. Delicious as is, but next time, I might try reducing the salt a bit and/or drying the apple a bit with a paper towel. But that’s just getting picky. 🙂 Thanks for the syrup recipe – it was my inspiration!
I did not read all the comments about this amazing syrup, so I don’t know if this has been said, but this morning I drizzled this syrup on my kids oatmeal and IT WAS LIFE CHANGING!!! My daughter HATES oatmeal and she ate 3 bowls of it! I did not use much and it made a huge difference. Thank you for the best syrup recipe ever!!!
Made this to go over the Chunky Monkey Pancakes…OH, YEAH!
Ok thanks, I just wondered if you had ever done it.
I love this syrup, its so delicious! My family loves it as well. Do you think you could can this recipe? It would just be convenient to have some preserved on the shelf and ready when you need it.
We don’t recommend canning this recipe- you’ll want to use recipes specifically designed and tested for canning and this isn’t.
OMG, I just saw this on Pinterest and re-pinned it. It sounds amazing and I can’t wait to try it out. Thank for posting.
Holy cow- just made this tonight for our waffles and it was AMAZING!! Thank you thank you for posting this, it’s freaking life-changing for this waffle-lover! 🙂
I just made this and life will never be the same!!! this is so freaking good!!!
Has anyone had success with substituting honey for corn syrup?
I absolutely adore this sauce! I have had the Our Best Bites cookbook for a year now and am slowly working my way through it, and yesterday (Christmas!) I made this sauce to go over french toast made with potato bread. Divine! I, like many other readers, also plan to make jars of this for gifts next year. (Too bad I hadn’t made this one week earlier. I could have done it this year!) While I CANNOT claim (do not claim!) to be a canning “expert,” I do know quite a bit about it and can say that in general, it is not considered safe to home-can things that have dairy ingredients. Home canning equipment (even pressure canners) do not have the ability to heat most dairy products sufficiently to kill all bacteria, so every [reputable] source I’ve read has said to stay away from it. Of course, there are always people who say “My grandma has been doing it this way for 50 years and nobody’s ever gotten sick” and that may even be true, but the risk of illness is much higher than with, say, diced tomatoes. So I will just tell everyone to refrigerate these wonderful jars of sauce!
So I just doubled this and jarred it up for gifts, it tastes so good that I actually burst out laughing in my kitchen when i tasted it. All alone. Thank you for another winner!
This recipe is to die for. We have been using it for years and when we share the recipe with those we have shared the syrup, they too are shocked with the ingredients. This is a favorite on sour dough pancakes! One batch is always enough for pancakes at breakfast and then over ice cream at dinner with a family of 5 🙂
I hope you’re right about the life span… I’ve never made these yummy condiments (like this one!) before but for Christmas this year we are doing baskets and bags full of homemade goodies because, well, we just don’t have a lot of money and I LOVE the idea of doing jams, syrups, etc. that will last and won’t be a dessert and/or cookie overload that ends up getting thrown away! So that being said, I’ll take your word! I think this sauce would be awesome over a cheesecake, too!
I made this for girl’s camp (with our Crepes) in August and brought back the rest. It’s been refrigerated ever since and we’ve used it almost every weekend on pancakes or waffles. No one has gotten sick and it tastes as good as it did when I first made it. I made it with store bought buttermilk (not the powder). That’s a 3+ month endorsement! Disclaimer: if you get sick, don’t blame me 🙂
I LOVE this recipe! This year I wanted to jar them up and give them as gifts along with Trader Joe’s Pumpkin pancake mix. Can you tell me how long the syrup will last? I was thinking of following the buttermilk expiration date. Is that right? Or does not it not have an expiration date due to the boiling? Help!
My home teacher have us a jar of this and we loved it. Their family tradition is to have it every Sunday. I was wondering.. Can you can this?? I’d like to make them for Christmas gifts for my family if it works. Any comments on this would bs greatly appreciated! Love your cookbooks!!! I use it weekly! Thanks!
I am wondering the same thing!
We make this sauce. A lot. My hips are now at least three inches wider because of this sauce. But, it is sooooo worth it. To me, it reminds me of a melted Werther’s candy. 🙂
We eat the syurp on lots of stuff, but our favorite way to enjoy this treat in the fall is with sliced honeycrisp apples.
Thanks so much for this wonderful site. Love, love, love your recipes!!!!!!!
I just found this on Pinterest. I’m always disappointed when people comment before they try something, cuz I want to know how it tastes, not that they think it looks good. Well, I got right up and made this and I have to say…people run right to your kitchen and do it! It’s super easy and TASTES out of this world, it will be my new go to caramel sauce! Thanks.
We love this and make it frequently! I’ve even subbed heavy cream when I didn’t have buttermilk on hand and it comes out super rich and thick.
I made this a couple nights ago to go with a pancake dinner. It was fabulous! I’m a novice at syrups/sauces/candy, but this was really simple and quick to put together. It was a bit thick once it cooled off, which surprised me a little. I halved the recipe and may not have used quite the right amount of buttermilk. Confession: my breakfast the past two days has been this syrup slathered on a warmed up tortilla and rolled around a banana. Delicious!
comments too long to read all. but if noone else has suggested it, add rum! i needed a rum sauce and used this……it is fabulous!
In some of the earlier comments for this, you were mentioning a “cube” of butter vs. a “stick” of butter. I think it may be a regional thing, because out west, the butter comes in shorter, more squat “cubes”, whereas in the more eastern part of the U.S. (east of the Mississippi?), it is shaped into longer “sticks”. Both 1/2 cup measurements, but different shapes.
Just made this for the first time this morning to put on top of our French toast – this syrup is SOOOO good, my husband had to take the bowl away from me because I was eating it with a spoon. I wasn’t in love with this on the French toast, but will try it on ice cream later tonight and I think it will be phenomenal.
I’m a total novice when it comes to making stuff like this, so I cooked mine for a little longer than what the recipe says because it wasn’t thickening, I thought I was doing something wrong. It wasn’t until it was completely cooled and at room temp that it really thickened up. I can’t get over how delicious it is – I think the buttermilk makes all the difference – will never buy store-bought caramel again!
y’all: I added a tiny bit of maple flavoring this time and it was divine! with just a smidge it doesn’t taste like maple syrup, it just adds another dimension to the caramel taste.