Happy MoFo Monday! I’m still in Rhode Island, but I prepared this post ahead of time so I could gush about yet another coMoFoer. Except… just like last week, I’m breaking my own rules for this sub-theme. Yes, a MoFo participant *did* blog about this recipe, but… it’s from a cookbook she was reviewing. Oh well. Rules are for breaking, right? (No way, says my rule-abiding inner child.)

Anyway, when I saw this post for Pumpkin Coconut Caramel Sauce come up in my Feedly last weekend, I immediately knew I was going to blog about it. Ever since discovering the magic that happens when you combine coconut oil or milk with a sugar or syrup, I’ve been salivating over any coconut-based caramel recipe I encounter. So this one, with its addition of pumpkin, was a siren syrup I couldn’t resist.

Now, here’s the thing: this recipe comes from Kathy Hester’s new slow cooker book. And I… well, I don’t exactly have a slow cooker. We have S’s rice cooker, which has a slow cooker setting. And I’m just assuming it does the same thing as a “real” slow cooker. It certainly works just fine for chilis and the like!

So I made this caramel in the rice/slow cooker. It didn’t thicken up as much as the caramel in the photo, but I can’t exactly blame the rice cooker because I also only cooked it for a little over five hours… I had to go to bed, and I didn’t want it to reduce down completely overnight.

Other than tasting a little spoonful of this caramel, I’ve only used it in my coffee, with mixed results. Visually, coffee with this caramel is quite unappealing—the oils in the caramel create a nasty shiny ring around the coffee, tinged bright yellow from the pumpkin. It looks positively radioactive. But it adds a mellow, subtly sweet pumpkin flavor that’s definitely appealing.

So, my verdict? If you’ve got a slow cooker, go for it! I’m excited to try it on oatmeal (big surprise) and maybe pancakes.

How do you use your slow cooker? 

I apologize for the lack of photos—I just didn’t have time to snap a good one before heading to RI!