Help - Salted caramel with glucose problem

[tarko]

i am trying to make a salted caramel filling for moulded chocolates.

i caramelize glucose and then add sugar,and caramelize until golden brown, then i add hot cream, butter, vanilla and salt and cook to 105C. now, when using glucose i always end up with a stocky, hard mess but when using honey (which in my opinion gives to much flavour!)

where do i go wrong? why does it work with honey and not glucose when the recipe states glucose? all and any help would be much apprecited...

[justDeb]

I've not heard of anyone carmelizing glucose by itself and I always add the glucose to the sugar at the beginning then carmelize the two. Maybe you should try it that way, as I haven't experienced a "stocky, hard mess."

[Kerry Beal]

I'm with Deb - I caramelize the glucose and the sucrose together.

[Lisa Shock]

I hadn't heard of the procedure, either. I've been trying for the past hour or so to research this online, to see if I was out of the loop on a regional technique or something. I haven't been able to find a precedent yet. I have to agree with Deb & The Doctor.

Caramelization changes the properties of a sugar, and, I suspect that caramelizing the glucose before adding the sugar is inhibiting its positive effects on the sugar.

[gap]

Just to add my agreement, I've always been told to caramelise the sugar then add the glucose

[tarko]

thx, i tried caramelizing the 2 at the same time and the caramel came out beautiful. there must be a mistake in the recipe that i'm following.

[chocofoodie]

Hi all,

I tried making salted caramels for the first time in a long time yesterday and it was a disaster. The recipe was grewlings fresh dairy one, with milk and cream. Strangely, the sugar and milk mixture never went past 100 degrees. But instead it started to reduce and burn. and in his recipe, he has you add the glucose later. Any tips on how to make this work? I can't imagine that the problem was the timing of the glucose?

[Kerry Beal]

Hi all,

I tried making salted caramels for the first time in a long time yesterday and it was a disaster. The recipe was grewlings fresh dairy one, with milk and cream. Strangely, the sugar and milk mixture never went past 100 degrees. But instead it started to reduce and burn. and in his recipe, he has you add the glucose later. Any tips on how to make this work? I can't imagine that the problem was the timing of the glucose?

Is your thermometer reading true? Used ºC instead of ºF?

[chocofoodie]

I thought it was the thermometer too. So I tried inserting another one, a probe style one for cream, and it had the same read. How long is it supposed to take to get to thread? and I didn't heat the milk or cream before adding it in, could that be part of the problem? I halved Grewling's recipe, but the tiny bit of muck I had at the end couldn't be the actual amount I'm supposed to end up with after halving, could it?

[chocofoodie]

What heat do you cook the caramel on?

[tammylc]

Or try this foolproof and delicious salty caramel from Epicurious. My go-to recipe. I double the salt and take the sugar pretty dark.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fleur-de-Sel-Caramels-230778

[chocofoodie]

I tried your caramels tammy and they worked!!! yay!! i've just left them to set, so not sure how they will turn out. But I had a question: I let it simmer at the lowest temp so I had to wait a long time for it to reach 248. I read once that if you bring a caramel to temp slowly, you need to bring it to a lower temp than if you bring it to temp quickly. Is this true? and if so, what's that lower temp?

I did do something differently than the recipe. I didn't add the water right away. I caramelized the sugar first and then added the glucose then the water and cream. Oh and I added vanilla to the cream. I think next time I will try caramelizing the glucose and sugar together.

Thanks!

[tammylc]

The recipe works perfectly as its written. Your changes sound like needless complications. Having the glucose and water in at the beginning helps ensure you don't get crystallization and get to the right thread stage. You probably took so long to come to temperature because you added the water with the cream, thus dropping the temp too much. Most of the water cooks out during the sugar caramelization, and then it only takes a short while at moderate heat to finish it to 248. Try making the recipe as written next time - as I say, it's virtually foolproof, so why mess with a good thing?

[chocofoodie]

The caramels are delicious! I caramelized the sugar first because I wanted a deeper flavor. As for the end result, the flavor was exactly what I was after, but they were a little harder than I would have liked. I am sure that is because I cooked them on low for so long and still brought them up to 248. Next time either I will higher the temperature to cook them faster, or I will still cook them on low but aim for a lower temperature. Thanks for the recipe.