Woke up with a hangover and a quarter bottle of buckfast tonic wine left, it was pancake day and needed a new idea for an alternative to sugar and lemon… so had the brainwave of a buckfast caramel sauce for the pancakes.. complete overkill but not actually that bad – think it could be used in cakes – watch this space lol

Ingredients:

100g sugar ( I used about 80g white sugar and 20g brown sugar costa type sachets )
Approximately 60g butter ( could get away without using maybe if vegan)
Quarter of large bottle buckfast tonic wine.

Method:

Melt the butter over a low heat in a small frying pan, then add the sugar and stir until you can see it caramelising, then be very careful as it will spit – add a little of the buckfast – whilst string very quickly… repeat this, allowing the water to evaporate – buckfast is quite sweet anyway so it will caramelise as well

I’m pretty sure someone will point out that you can dry caramelise sugar – but this works as well.. and the added butter keeps it from hardening too quickly.

Once you have a nice dark caramel and you can see there are no crystals left, it should be ready – or you could possibly stir in some cream gradually to make a sauce for desert..

Any excess, spoon onto grease proof paper and fold the paper over to cover it once cooled – should be able to store for a while like this and reheat if required.

I don’t really bother much with deserts but my girlfriend has a sweet tooth and I couldn’t help incorporating buckfast – will update once I have another bash.