In Your Kitchen: Cooking with Anuja

Anuja Kamdar, owner of the home bakery Sinful Bites by Anuja, started off her career in her family business, when her sweet tooth wasn’t satisfied with good eggless cupcakes available in the city she started experimenting on different recipes in the kitchen. She became popular amongst her family and friends and started to get requests for various sweet creations for occasions. Anuja realised she had a stronger calling in the baking world and decided to quit the desk job and venture into the exciting kitchen.

Sinful Bites by Anuja now churns out beautiful multi-tiered wedding cakes, brownies, pies, cookies and anything else that your sweet tooth craves!

Read more about this young lady below:

10 Questions with Anuja 

Day Job: Owner of Sinfulbites by Anuja

Lives in: Ahmedabad, India

In the kitchen, I couldn’t live without: Chocolate and nuts

Current food obsession: Alphonso’s

If I could cook for anyone: Patrick Dempsey, aka McDreamy of Grey’s Anatomy 

A traditional family dinner is: Salad, vegetables, lentils, rice and roti

Go-to comfort food: Pizza anytime!!

Would love to travel to: Swiss Alps, Paris and Croatia

Currently reading: Every Time It Rains by Nikita Singh

My motto: “Have the courage to follow your Heart and Intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.” Steve Jobs

Anuja’s Recipe for Salted Caramel

 This is my favourite homemade salted caramel sauce with only 4 ingredients required! I really want you to try this stuff! It’s sweet, sticky, buttery, salted sugary goodness. Liquid gold, as some may call it. Salty and sweet steals my heart; there is no combination of flavours like the two! I particularly like homemade salted caramel in the dark chocolate salted caramel pie, on top of a vanilla bunt or even drizzled on chocolate chip ice-cream. The possibilities for salted caramel are endless!

There is no candy thermometer required – just use your eyes to determine when to add the next ingredient. The caramel itself doesn’t take long to make, only a short 10 minutes. It is so delicious and simply irresistible however, you’ll want it to cool down completely before using it in a recipe. The caramel will thicken as it cools.

Yields: 1 cup | Prep Time: 10 mins | Cook Time: 10 mins + cooling time

Ingredients:

1 cup (200g) granulated sugar

6 tbsp (90g) salted butter, room temperature cut up into 6 pieces

½ cup (120ml) heavy cream

1 tsp salt

Method:

Heat the granulated sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly with a high heat resistant rubber spatula or wooden spoon.

Sugar will form clumps and eventually melt into a thick brown, amber-coloured liquid as you continue to stir. Be careful not to burn it.

Once sugar is completely melted, immediately add the butter. Be careful not to burn yourself in this step because the caramel will bubble rapidly when the butter is added.

Stir the butter into the caramel until it is completely melted, about 2-3 minutes. A whisk helps if you find the butter is separating from the sugar.

Very slowly, drizzle in 1/2 cup of heavy cream while stirring. Since the heavy cream is colder than the caramel, the mixture will rapidly bubble and/or splatter when added, so be careful again while doing it.

Allow the mixture to boil for 1 minute. It will rise in the pan as it boils.

Remove from heat and stir in 1 teaspoon of salt. Allow to cool down before using.

Make ahead tip:  

You can make this caramel in advance. Make sure it is covered tightly and store it for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator. Warm the caramel up for a few seconds before using in a recipe. This caramel is okay at room temperature for a day if you’re traveling or gifting it.

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