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This homemade sugar-free caramel recipe is so good, you are going to feel like a kitchen super-star when you give it a try. It’s so easy to make and these keto caramel candies are great for gifts for friends and neighbours or just for your family to enjoy!
You have two choices with this, you can make a sticky caramel filling or cake coating or you can continue on your journey of reaching candy perfection and make sublime sugar-free keto caramel candies.
The ingredients for this keto caramel are very simple. Butter, allulose, my Keto Corn Syrup, and my Keto Sweetened Condensed Milk. For flavourings, vanilla extract or my keto vanilla paste and a touch of molasses to enhance the caramel flavour. Yum! The key to creating this magical caramel experience is in the cooking process.
When I designed this recipe, I had soft and chewy keto caramel candies in mind, but it also works for softer caramel, as well as a drip sauce on cake. You can add 2 more tablespoons of Keto Sweetened Condensed Milk to make it even softer and runnier. If desperate and pressed for time you can even substitute heavy cream for the keto condensed milk. However, if you do, it will take longer and you may want to add a tablespoon or two more of allulose to account for the sweetened nature of condensed milk.
However, as far as Keto Corn Syrup substitutes go, my Keto Corn Syrup is reliable in this recipe, and uses allulose to work. Substituting with other sweeteners is not advised. You’ve been warned.
This recipe, similar to the procedure in my keto corn syrup recipe, has an important element to prevent crystallization. To begin with, you start with just the keto corn syrup and allulose. Then, all you do is that once you have your corn syrup and allulose mixed together and it’s starting to form a boil, cover the pot and leave it be for at least one minute.
This traps steam and moisture in the pot helping to melt any allulose crystals that may have foolishly found their way up the sides of the pan. This gentle coaxing of allulose back to the mixture is key in preventing crystals in your caramel later on that interrupts the smooth chewy mouthfeel of caramelized perfection. Are you hungry? Me too! Just writing this is making me hungry, too.
Maintain your burner/stovetop at medium heat. Again, you don’t want any drastic changes in temperature as you cook the caramels. If you notice the temperature is getting too hot too fast, turn it down a touch.
Now this part is key. According to the stages of candy making, this is past what is called the “hard-crack stage,” which means there is virtually no water left in the syrup and if you were to drop a little of this molten goodness into cold water, it would become brittle and most likely crack when bent.
The “hard crack stage” is when your allulose syrup is between 300 and 310ºF (149 and 154ºC). Since we are passing this stage, the allulose syrup will “caramelize” and your syrup will begin to take on an amber color. Find out more about the stages of candy making here. If you do, bear in mind things aren’t completely the same as sugar since we are using allulose and it browns more easily than sugar and LOVES water a bit more, too.
It’s after you reach this point you add your room temperature butter and Keto Sweetened Condensed Milk. You can do this in stages. I dropped all the butter in it once and it was fine but I do take my time pouring in my keto sweetened condensed milk.
To be clear, I also have never done this with any ingredients being cold. This is because no matter how fast or slow you add your ingredients, you need to maintain a constant boil. This is very important. So cold ingredients could affect this. Also, if you add the cream product too quickly and the temperature changes, it can curdle. Alas, such a thing would cause you great sadness.
In truth, I personally have a love hate thing with candy thermometers and actually all thermometers if we are going to be honest with each other. You can use an instant read thermometer instead of a candy thermometer but they don’t have that handy clip to keep them on the side of your pan. Many of them though are magnetized, so if you pick a pan that attracts a magnet that could help you.
Nevertheless, I still have at least two when I make this so I can gauge accuracy. Also, if your thermometer is touching the bottom of the pot, it may give you false readings. Altitude and humidity also affect the outcome, so the perfect temperature may have to be adjusted depending on where you are and the weather. Moreover, the temperature in one spot may not be the same in another. You can gently stir the mix with your thermometer to give you an idea of what your overall temperature is.
That’s why doing a water test is a great method as well. That will give you reliable information no matter the location and/or climate. To do a water test, drop a spoonful of your hot sugar-free caramel into a cup of ice water.
If you are making a loose filling or drip sauce, you’re looking for the keto caramel to form a ball in the water. However, if you try to mould the caramel with your fingers into a ball but it kind of keeps its shape but is super sticky and falls apart as you touch it. That’s when you know it’s ready to be used as a loose filling or drip sauce.
If you are making keto caramel candies and you drop the caramel in the water, mould the caramel with your fingers into the shape of a ball. If the ball maintains its shape, that’s good. You will know the caramel is ready for use as candies when the keto caramel feels pretty firm and pliable.
Once you are done and if you are using it right away for fillings or a sauce, let it cool a bit and then use away. If not, you can put it into containers. I store this in the fridge and let it warm up a bit before I use.
If you are making sugar-free caramel candies, pour it into your square pan and let it set in your fridge before you cut it into candies. When you do, use a good knife! Cold, your keto caramel candies with be a bit harder to cut. Moreover, the longer you cooked them, the more brittle and less chewy they will be.
A little story here, one day when making them I spent about 20 minutes arguing with my jar of Keto Corn Syrup that wasn’t wanting to open for me. Don’t worry, it paid the price of such behaviour by getting all used up! Anyway, to make a short story longer, I was behind schedule with that debacle and now rushing, I accidentally added my butter and Keto Sweetened Condensed Milk into my allulose and keto corn syrup at the beginning of the procedure. Oops.
Since what’s done was done, I just kept going and decided I’d just go up to 310 – 320ºF and then remove it. I went that high knowing that allulose loves moisture and that just going to lower the temperature of between 240 – 260 without having raised the allulose and Keto Corn Syrup up higher, my caramel may never get the right consistency to make candy.
The gamble paid off, and what resulted was a fantastic keto caramel toffee. It’s softer than a brittle yet hard, and melts in your mouth. Now, I’m not sure I recommend this method. The other, is more reliable and will result in a luscious sticky chewy goodness that is most desirable. However, if you accidentally do what I did, don’t throw it out; keep going and trust the caramel.
Wrapping up, I have three more tips. The first is, resist the urge to stir. You want to stir just to moisten the allulose into the water and corn syrup before bringing it to a boil. This is fine, but after that, there is no need to stir until you begin to add the butter and Keto Sweetened Condensed Milk – even then, don’t stir a lot. You can even just stir with your candy thermometer.
Secondly, don’t try this without a candy thermometer. The temperature matters. Even though I complain about the reliability of these thermometers, you still need one. You can even be crazy like me and use two: a candy thermometer and an instant read thermometer.
If you’ve been making candy for years and years then maybe you can go by sight and water test alone, but it’s not something I’d suggest. This is especially because you are working with allulose not sugar, so it won’t be exactly the same as a sugar based recipe. Use your water test to confirm the readings from your thermometer.
Thirdly and lastly, this gets extremely hot. Wear gloves to protect yourself from burning. You can also read these safety tips. If the hot allulose touches your skin it can cause very bad burns. Make sure your caramel-making attire includes clothes that cover your arms and legs. This is not the recipe to make while wearing a strappy bikini.
Well, that sums it all up. I hope you love this keto candy recipe as much as I do and enjoy your luscious sugar-free caramel! Next up on the blog are a couple of other recipes that include this fantastic sugar-free caramel recipe too, including chocolate and cake. Hooray!
Hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do,
Nutritional Information and portions are estimated from the USDA Food Database. Net carbs exclude fiber, sugar alcohols, and products like allulose, because they do not generally affect blood sugar. I try to be accurate, but feel free to make your own calculations.
Welcome! I'm Nikkey Elizabeth.
Hi! My name is Nikkey Elizabeth and this me, after cutting down raspberry canes in my snow shoes. La Femme Nikketo is a combination of two dreams, making delicious sugar-free products that you’d never guess where sugar-free and transforming the farm my husband and I have, The Farm in Glenville, into a working farm where we grow what we make. Together these sugar-free dreams offer boutique farm-to-table preserves and confections, all made here on our farm in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
Netrition is a great source for resistant starch flour like Cabalose, which I use in my
Super Flaky No-Fail Keto Pie Pastry
These easy & quick Triple Chocolate Keto Coconut Flour Brownies are sugar-free, gluten-free, nut-free, & paleo! With the chocolate ganache frosting on top, this brownie is meant to satisfy some serious chocolate lover cravings––like mine!
Pineapple extract is totally simple to make and doesn’t take much time at all. I adapted my recipe
I just love this Keto Nut-Free Turtles recipe and I hope that you’re going to love it to. That’s right, you heard me correctly; I am talking about keto nut free turtles.
Crème Brûlée is a classic that is always a crowd pleaser and doesn’t take a huge amount of effort.
Sugar-Free & Nut-Free
Where are you located?
Our farm is located in Glenville, Nova Scotia. It’s a little hamlet between Mabou and Inverness on the island of Cape Breton.
My Jam looks separated, what do I do?
Our sugar-free jams are natural products. Because we are sugar-free and use all-natural products, from time to time ‘fruit float’ can happen to fruit like strawberry or rhubarb during the canning process leaving pulp at the top and jelly on the bottom. If this occurred with your jam, don’t worry, it’s just as delicious as all our other jams. When this happens, we encourage our customers to dig in and mix it up!!!
What does it mean you’re sold out for the season?
We are a farm-to-table business, where we believe strongly in growing a large proportion of what we make. Sometimes, if there are other local growers that have supplies beyond our own, we may top-up our fruit or berry inventory (this is especially true with Blueberries as our bushes are young and our neighbour has acres of stunning wild blueberries!). However, for the most part, we grow what we make and when we run out, that’s it until next year. Every year our capacity grows so we hope to run out a little later each year.
I just bought from you at a market, will those items be on your website?
For the most part, yes, but not yet, or soon. If you are reading this and we are still in a growing season, I usually am so busy farming, making, and selling at my local farmer’s markets that I don’t have a chance to update my website. However, once the farmers markets at the end of Thanksgiving Weekend (That’s the second weekend of October here in Canada), I usually put aside time to update the website with all the current products. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, I post when that happens.
Why don’t you use the same sweetener in all your products?
Sometimes I feel that by producing sugar-free goods, you have to be part magician, chemist, and explorer. There are so many sugar-free sweeteners out there and not one of them behaves exactly like sugar. Each of them has its positive and negative qualities depending on the application. For instance, I use a lot of allulose, not never in meringue, because it loves water too much, so you could back that meringue for hours and it would still be sticky.
Are there sweeteners you don’t use in your products?
Yes, there are a few. I don’t use artificial sweeteners at all. Next, I’m not a fan of stevia because of the after taste so I don’t use that either. Also, I don’t use xylitol as it’s toxic to dogs. I love dogs and have an adorable retired racing greyhound myself who is an expert at catching what falls on the floor before anyone can get to it first — he’s that fast. As such, if I wouldn’t have any food with xylitol in my house, just in case it could fall on the floor and could be consumed by my super-fast houndie, I won’t put in my products just in case for your puppies too. Finally, I don’t use products like maltitol or mannitol, as they are notorious for upsetting the stomach.
Shipping & Pickup
Deliciousness takes time. Many of our products are made to order in a small facility. Orders typically take 2-3 business days to produce and process before they ship – excluding weekends and holidays. At times, we reserve 5-7 business days to ship your order in case any ingredients are delayed in shipment from our suppliers. You would be notified by email if this occurs. You will receive an email confirmation with your order tracking number when your order ships. Please read the shipping notification email carefully.
Shipping
We ship via Canada Post. A shipping estimate will be provided during the checkout process. We only ship within Canada and to the US at this time.
Shipping within Canada is a flat rate of $9.99 or FREE if you spend $125 or more!
Shipping rates to the U.S. are calculated in real time during checkout based on destination and weight of the package.
For all shipments within Canada: Expedited shipping via Canada Post takes an estimated 3-9 Business Days depending on your location.
All shipments the the US may be subject to customs charges and or duty. We are not responsible for any costs associated with customs charges, taxes, brokerage charges, and or duty.
International Shipping is not available at this time.
Note that delivery dates are always an estimate only, delivery times may vary depending on your location, weather conditions, and other factors.
Pickup
From June to October we offer pick-up every Sunday during the Mabou Farmer’s Market for local shoppers.
Please have your order in by Friday to ensure we have it ready for you for the Market that Sunday.
From November to March we offer local porch pick-up or drop in the Greektown/Pocket/Danforth Village area.
Below is your return policy. However, more than anything, La Femme Nikketo wants to ensure their customers are happy and love their purchases. If you have any concerns with your purchases, please contact us right away so we can assist you.
We accept returns within 15 days from shipping date under certain circumstances. La Femme Nikketo will ONLY pay for a return label if a product arrived damaged or was shipped in error. In all other cases, the customer is responsible for the shipping costs. Please contact us if you need to return your purchase. Please note that a product is required to be returned in order for a refund to be issued. Sometimes we might be able to issue a refund based on a photo confirmation of a product damage. We do not accept returns on any opened/used items.
