Lots of recipes call for cooking sugar with water to make caramel, but it's really not necessary: all you wind up doing is evaporating the water before the sugar can caramelize.

There is an excellent guide to making caramel, with good safety tips.

They are also used in northern Costa Rica to make sweets and caramel and in Panama as folk medicine to treat pneumonia and diarrhoea.

Making caramel, however, would prevent this from being a simple preparation, so I substituted honey.

Making caramel is simple.

To make caramel, combine 1/4 cup sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons light corn syrup, and 1 tablespoon water in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat.

If you have never made caramel before, add a little water to the sugar, about a tablespoon per cup.

She recommends making caramel in a pan with a nonstick finish.

As for cleaning up after making caramel, that's the easiest part.

It is used to make coconut candy, caramel and jelly.