Without darkness there is no light, without sadness there is no happiness and without salty flavours, there are no sweet ones. Don't leave out salt from the party-ever. Always use a little bit, whatever sweet cake you make. It will add taste, not saltiness. It will balance the flavours. If there is no salt, something is missing, but you cannot really tell what, so just be brave enough and add it to all your brownies, cupcakes, muffins, crumbles, cakes if you did not do it so far.

You can make salted caramel with salted butter, or unsalted and add salt in the end. (I used salted butter, and added extra salt in the end too.) When you caramelize the butter with the sugar, let it smoke a little bit, but do not burn it. If you burn it the first time, start it over (do not try to wash the pan, soak it). If anyone asks you WHAT ARE YOU DOING, the firealarm almost turned on! (or it did) you can say: I am just making salted caramel sauce! For what? For any kind of crumble, ice cream, brownie, apple pie, or anything else, go nuts...keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks and be tempted sometimes to eat from it with a SPOON!

Ingredients

170 g butter (organic, as local as possible)

300 g sugar (local or fairtrade)

250 ml cream (local, organic, if possible biodynamic)

SALT (before buying the pink himalaya salt, try to find local salt sources...)

Preparation

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat, add the sugar, raise the temperature, and stir until it is boiling. Carefully swirl the pan, brown the sugar, but do not burn it (do not leave the kitchen, but do not even think of starting something else, besides standing next to the stove and stare at the pan). It is quite meditative, you do not have to do to much. Try to focus on the sugar-butter mixture instead of planning the next day's schedule or what you did forget to do the day before. Cook with mindfulness. Focus on one thing, on the pan in this case. It will take about 5-6 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and pour the cream into it. Be careful, the hot caramel will splatter, stir it constantly, until it is smooth and creamy. If not, turn on the heat again on a very low level and melt the caramel. Cool down the caramel and add salt, taste. Add more salt and taste it again. Remember: you can always add more salt, but you can never make it less salty.