Vegan caramel sauce is a healthy alternative to caramel made for dipping or sauce. Served hot or cold, this vegan caramel sauce recipe is fabulous for fruit, cookies, pretzels, or anything you choose to dip. Or thin the dip to make an incredible sauce.
Whenever I think of fall, I remember apple cider, fresh-picked apples, and the season's colors in Michigan. Since moving to Arizona, I still enjoy the fall, but cider mills are non-existent. So, I made a vegan caramel sauce to bring fall to Arizona. My date caramel sauce isn't only great for dipping apples and can be made thinner as an ice cream sauce. Or, if you are anything like me, you can dip just about anything in this vegan caramel sauce recipe.
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As many of you know, I'm not much of a dessert fan. My blog clearly illustrates my lack of a sweet tooth. But I love savory-sweet food like vegan caramel sauce!
Although dates are a natural source of fructose, they are high in nutrients, fiber, and antioxidants.
Therefore, dates are the perfect natural sweetener to replace sugar. Many of you may know date syrup is made with dates and water blended. Therefore, dates make the ideal healthy caramel sauce.
Sauce Ingredients
- Medjool Dates: Medjool Dates are easier to eat and quite soft, while regular dates are often soaked in water with a bit of bicarb before cooking. In terms of nutritional value, Medjool dates are identical to regular dates; however, regular dates have more fiber, fat, and protein.
- Natural Peanut Butter: Natural peanut butter usually contains just two ingredients, peanuts, and salt. However, there are also salt-free varieties if you really want to punish yourself. Conversely, conventional peanut butter includes sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oil to ensure that its consistency is not affected by time or temperature.
- Vanilla Extract: Vanilla extract—the kind that explicitly says "pure vanilla extract" on its label—is made by soaking vanilla beans in an alcohol solution to "extract."
- Plant Milk: I used unsweetened, unfavored oat milk.
- Pink Salt: Himalayan pink salt contains less sodium per serving than ordinary table salt.
Sauce Ingredient Substitutions
- Try dried dates if Medjool dates are unavailable.
- Choose any peanut butter or nut butter.
- If you need to swap one vanilla flavoring for another, we've found that ½ vanilla bean is the same as 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste.
- Any unsweetened, unflavored plant milk works well.
- Use any type of salt available.
How to Make the Sauce
- If the dates aren't soft, soak them in boiling water for 10 minutes; then drain, and add to a high-speed blender.
- Next add all tehe other ingrdeitns.
- Blend until smooth.
- When the vegan caramel sauce is blended, it is ready to serve immediately, or it can be placed in the refrigerator and served cold.
- On the other hand, it can be heated in a saucepan and used as a hot dip.
- Another option is to add more plant milk to thin out the vegan caramel sauce to use as a caramel sauce for vegan ice cream or on top of black bean brownies.
- Or one of my favorite things to dip into date caramel dip is pretzels!
Other Ideas for Dipping
- Frozen bananas
- Strawberries
- Cookies
- Vegan Marshmallows
- Graham Crackers
- Nuts
- Dried Fruit
Recipe FAQs
Most vegan caramel sauce is usually made with vegan butter, light brown sugar, coconut milk, agave, and salt.
Oykos dairy-free Greek-style coconut-based Salted Caramel is 100% plant-based. This is your tasty vegan dessert, whether you are a vegetarian, flexitarian, plant-based enthusiast, or simply want to discover other plant-based options.
Fortunately, there are now several brands of vegan caramels that can be melted for dipping caramel apples, baked into desserts, or savored.
Tips
- Before blending the vegan caramel sauce, one trick for softening dates is to soak the dates in hot water.
- Even though this step is unnecessary if you use fresh dates, it also helps if you don't have a quality high-speed blender.
- Once drained, the dates are softer, and the pits are easier to remove, which is also necessary before blending. Of course, buying pitted dates is best, but sometimes, pitted dates are more expensive, and eliminating the pits takes seconds.
- I like to make my own peanut butter by adding organic salted peanuts to a food processor and processing them until smooth. This way, there isn't any added oil or preservatives. It's just peanut butter in its most natural form.
So, skinny dip with some vegan caramel sauce if you love to dip.
Healthy Vegan Desserts to Try
If you love this vegan caramel sauce, give us a 5-star review and comment below. We would love to hear from you!
📖 Recipe
Vegan Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
- 12-14 dates pitted (1 cup)
- ¼ cup peanut butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ teaspoon pink salt
- ¾ cup oat milk or plant-milk of choice
Instructions
- If the dates aren't fresh (or a little stiff), boil 2 cups of water in the microwave and soak the dates for 5 minutes; then drain.
- Remove the date pits.
- Place the dates and all other ingredients in a high-speed blender.
- To make a thinner sauce, add more plant milk to meet your desired consistency.
- In order to heat the date caramel sauce, place the sauce in a saucepan, and heat it on low, occasionally stirring until heated through.
- Or, place the sauce in the refrigerator and serve cold.
- Choose your dippers.
Notes
- Before blending the vegan caramel sauce, one trick for softening dates is to soak the dates in hot water.
- Even though this step is unnecessary if you use fresh dates, it also helps if you don't have a quality high-speed blender.
- Once drained, the dates are softer, and the pits are easier to remove, which is also necessary before blending. Of course, buying pitted dates is best, but sometimes, pitted dates are more expensive, and eliminating the pits takes seconds.
- When the vegan caramel sauce is blended, it is ready to serve immediately, or it can be placed in the refrigerator and served cold. On the other hand, it can be heated in a saucepan and used as a hot dip.
- Another option is to add more plant milk to thin out the vegan caramel sauce to use as a caramel sauce for vegan ice cream or on top of black bean brownies.
Nutrition
Hi! My name is Kathy, I am a retired high school English teacher & vegan enthusiast and blogger. My entire blog is fully plant-based vegan. I truly believe what we eat & how we live determines our health & the preservation of our planet! 🙂
Elizabeth
Can you use date paste instead? Thank you!
Kathy Carmichael
Hi Elizabeth, I haven't tried date paste instead of dates. Date paste is mixed with water to make it paste, so if I were going to try to substitute date paste, I would reduce the amount of plant milk, or it might be too thin. If you try it, please let me know how it turns out. I'm sure others would benefit from your experience.
Donna Macintosh
I just made this and it's sooo yummy. I believe that I just found a new keeper as a recipe. I made it 'as is' but next time I'm also going to throw in a frozen banana which I always seem to have for smoothies.
Kathy Carmichael
Hi Donna, I'm so glad you like the vegan caramel sauce. I love the idea of the frozen banana. Let me know how it turns out. Thank you for the feedback. appreciate it.
ACC
The date caramel dip looks wonderful. I am wondering if there might be a way to make caramel apples with date caramel but it's probably the wrong consistency (?). Also wondering if you were to blend the caramel with tofu, if it would make a yummy cake frosting. I welcome your thoughts!
Kathy Carmichael
Hi Amelia, I tried caramel apples, but the consistency doesn't work. The only way it works is to use coconut oil, which I don't cook with. As for the frosting, I think that sounds like a great idea. Let me know if it works. Thank you for reaching out.
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