Toffee Sauce

• 50g butter
• 50g soft brown sugar
• 2tbsp golden syrup
• 2tbsp creme fraiche
• 1tsp vanilla essence

Put everything except the cream into a pan and bring to a gentle boil. Boil for a couple of mins until thick and then stir in the cream.

This is quite a flexible recipe. The cream can be replaced by creme fraiche, yoghurt or similar and the the golden syrup can be replace with any syrup or honey though this does effect the flavour. The vanilla essence is not essential but makes a huge difference though you could try replacing or supplementing it with orange essence. I would not condone replacing the butter with margarine but that's mainly because I hate margarine and find butter gives a much better flavour. Of course you could replace the vanilla with spices.

Soft fruits such as peaches (from a tin or fresh), apricots etc. can be added and softened in the toffee. If you do this I suggest you serve it with pancakes and yoghurt (to cut through the sweetness).

The sauces is great with pancakes, ice cream, waffles and similar. I originally saw it in BBC Good Food magazine but I don't know where the recipe cutting is gone and they don't have it on their site. The above is what I've been using (equal amounts of butter and sugar and the same volume of syrup and diary) I do not remember what it should be but this works really well for me.