Caramel Frosting recipe • The Gold Lining Girl (2024)

FAQs

What is caramel icing made of? ›

How to Make Caramel Buttercream. Cook the sugars, butter, cream, milk, corn syrup, and salt until butter is melted and sugar dissolves, then increase the heat. Once the mixture reaches a full boil, continue cooking for 4 minutes or until the sauce reaches 230F.

Too short of a cooling time: Caramel sauce thickens significantly as it cools, so let the caramel cool for the appropriate time to achieve the right thickness. If the sauce is still too thin after cooling completely, place it back on the stovetop and reheat it on low heat for a few additional minutes.

If caramels are too soft, that means the temperature didn't get high enough. Again place the caramel back into a sauce pan with a couple of tablespoons of water and heat to 244°F. If you don't have a candy thermometer, you can test with a cold water test.

If too many bits of sugar get stuck to the side of the pan, they will harden and can cause the caramel to seize or become gritty or grainy when you add in the butter and/or the cream. Prevent this by gently swirling the sugar around as it melts, while holding the pan's handle, instead of using a utensil to stir it.

Ok you may not have known this but, ~newsflash~ caramel is literally just cooked sugar with a little bit of butter (for stability) and heavy cream (for flavor & mouthfeel) stirred in at the end. The longest (and “hardest”) part of making caramel is just toasting and melting down the sugar at the very beginning.

Frosting is the thickest of these confections and is ideal for spreading or piping on cakes, cupcakes and cookies. Icing is a little thinner than frosting and is often poured or piped over coffee cakes, pound cakes, doughnuts and cookies—and it usually hardens when it dries.

Generally, “caramel” is defined as a chewy, light-brown candy made from butter, sugar, and milk or cream. For example: I love eating caramels because they are soft and chewy. In contrast, “Carmel,” is used as a proper noun, and it is a popular beach town in California, known as Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Stirring the sugar

If your caramel becomes gritty or grainy, the sugar probably crystallized. If the melting sugar splashes up onto the sides of the pan, it quickly loses its moisture content and forms back into crystals. That can set off a chain reaction that can cause caramel to seize up, ruining the entire batch.

Give your caramel at least two hours to set, or overnight if possible. You can also pop caramel into the fridge to help it set up faster. The caramel will sweat a little when brought out of the fridge, but will still taste fine. If you don't eat it right away, here's how to store caramel.

When making wet caramel, you'll naturally need the mixture to be, well, wet. But exactly how wet you make it will influence your final sauce. Adding too much liquid can leave you with a sauce that's too runny or which is dull and flavorless.

Why isn't my caramel going brown? ›

However, if you're heating sugar in a pan to make the caramel sauce, you need the right quantities of sugar and other ingredients, the right heat, and enough time for the sugar to melt and turn brown. A big mistake is to take your pan off the heat before this process has finished.

Some form of dairy — typically butter and/or heavy cream — is usually added to the mixture at either the beginning or the end of cooking. This addition makes the caramel richer, thicker, and lighter in color, lending more viscosity and rounder flavor.

Here's how to make soft caramel harder: Put the caramel back in the pot, add 2-3 tablespoons of water, and remelt the caramel. Cook the caramel until it reaches the correct temperature, and pour it back into a foil-lined pan.

Add flour to the sauce.

If you want to thicken your caramel sauce with flour, start by filling a measuring cup with ¼ cup (60 mL) of cold water for each cup (240 mL) of caramel sauce that you want to thicken. Mix 2 tbsp (30 mL) into the cold water. Then add the flour mixture into the thin caramel sauce.

Caramel is made by heating sugar (either with a liquid or by itself, more on that below!) in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until it melts and becomes clear. The liquefied sugar is then cooked, without stirring, until it darkens in color, taking on additional flavor notes the longer it remains on the heat.

Caramel is, simply, burned sugar. We want to let it melt, darken to an amber color and take on a deep and bittersweet flavor. The best, most flavorful caramel starts with this step. You can caramelize sugar two ways— with the dry method or wet method.

Melting sugar is similar to caramelizing sugar. Both processes involve boiling a sugar and water mixture until it becomes syrup. You have to melt sugar to make homemade caramel; however, not all melted sugar becomes caramel.