Annie, I used your method -- just heated some caramels and some water into the microwave. It worked fine, and I even got the amount of water right, quite by chance. We had it last night over vanilla ice cream. It was good, but.. these were the TJ "fleur de sel" caramels, and that saltiness became more noticeable in the sauce. So it was best with a restrained amount of sauce. I'm thinking it would be very good in something like turtle candy. Maybe a liquid turtle. As I was eating my caramel sundae, I thought again how much Haagen-Dazs vanilla has changed for the worse. Until the last few years, it was one of the truly perfect foods. Now it is much sweeter, and the vanilla flavor is different. I wonder if there's an ice cream like the old Haagen-Dasz vanilla.

"What exactly are Cheetos?" Cheetos were invented to torture health food nuts past the brink of insanity. Try as they might to block the craving for useless cheezy temptations Cheetos invades their pleasure cells causing a serotonin/dopamine cascade resulting in total addiction from just one orange dusted nibble. Even causual addicts can be spotted by the tell-tale orange coloring of their thumb and forefinger. Hopeless hardcore addicts may even sport an orange ring around their lips. ; ) lyra Here is a link that might be useful: the cheezy facts

That recipe does look good, now I'm not sure which to try myself. Lars' recipe looks simpler than this recipe a friend assures me is good. Maybe I'll need to try both. I love caramel & really been intending to try making some (other than the sweetened condensed version) Caramels 2 c sugar 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup corn syrup 1 cup evaporated milk 1 pint heavy whipping cream 1 cup butter 1 1/4 t vanilla extract Grease 12x15 pan. In pot, combine sugars, corn syrup, evaporated milk, whipping cream, and butter. Monitor heat with candy thermometer while stirring. When thermometer reaches 250 deg remove from heat. Stir in vanilla. Transfer to prepared pan and let cool completely. When cool cut into squares and wrap in wax paper to storage.

This is one of those try it and see kinds of things. The 1 tsp of each is what I would try. I don't generally like flavor concentrates, but I take your word for it that the KAF is awesome. :) You can also make a maple caramel sauce from scratch using maple syrup (grade B, dark and tasty) and maple sugar, but that would be expensive and since you already like Ann T's sauce, adapting it makes sense.