piping caramel

Hello,

I'm new here. For a quick background, I'm an amateur dabbling in confections, mostly molded filled chocolates (truffles, bon-bons). Scientist/engineer by day, chocolatier by night. I work out of my home, with no fancy tempering or enrobing machines. Everything is made by hand, small batch, etc.

I am looking for advice for making a soft caramel filling for use with polycarbonate molds - by this I mean something I can pipe into a chocolate shell. I have made soft caramel (sugar + corn syrup + cream and related recipes) many times, but I find cutting and hand-dipping them all to be somewhat painful with mixed results. I have lots of molds, including magnetic ones for transfer sheets,and would love to make chocolate covered caramels in them.

So... any tips? Should I just cook to a lower temperature so that the caramel is fluid at room temperature (or something cool enough to not melt the chocolate shells)? Adjust ratios of corn syrup or cream? I am looking for a "chewy" caramel, not a caramel-flavored white chocolate ganache (unless that is really the only way).

(I did look through the archives, but everything seemed to suggest using the molds to form the caramels, before taking them out and dipping them.)

Any help is much appreciated!

-m

Greweling has a good recipe for Cream Caramel that pipes very well.

Thanks much. I have his "at home" book, but I will take a look at the pro one.

There are a lot of great recipes for caramels that can be piped, but if what you want is chewy that might be a little more difficult to pipe.

Another place to look is Jean-Pierre Wybauw's books. My only "problem" with his books is that the flavors of the recipes are definitely old school and tend to be sweet. The techniques are really dead on, though.

And you are on the right track - caramel texture is as much a matter of temperature as it is of ingredients list. I have a recipe (uses sweetened condensed milk) that I make that can be quite soft at room temp but when I let it cook another couple of degrees it's a very different animal. I tend to make it thick/chewy and then warm and soften with cream to get the exact consistency I am looking for.