I'm looking for a caramel icing recipe that doesn't crust too quick. I'd like to be able to smooth it. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but I thought one of you might have luck w/ a particular recipe. Any suggestions?

Do you have a regular/vanilla bc that you like to use? If so, just sub the water/milk with caramel coffee syrup from Torani or DaVinci. I use it in my usual bc & it is fabulous, especially on a chocolate cake!

I have made the caramel from a can of sweetened condensed milk, I did it stovetop in a pot, rather than boiling the whole can.

then added the cooled caramel to IMBC until I liked the flavor.

I make the caramel recipe from the CMD book. The one she uses on the Banana cake, The trick to having it come out smooth is not to cook butter and sugar longer than 2 or 3 minutes. remove from heat then add milk and cook another 2 minutes. It comes out smooth. Ater I spread between the first layer, I put the bowl in the microwave for 20 seconds,beat a little more then pour the rest over the cake.

I love making caramel SMBC. I used to make it with brown sugar in place of the white sugar, but now I add homemade caramel to my basic SMBC. It is SUPER caramel-y that way. On a banana cake it is to DIE for.

You could use caramel sundae topping, but it's not as good IMHO.

Hi
Jkalman, I've never used SMBC before but I really want to give it a try. Do you make your SMBC as told in the recipes here and then you add more caramel? Sounds delicious but, isn't that too sweet?
Can I use this caramel SMBC with the VIVA method?
Thanks

That's exactly what I do.. and no it's not too sweet. You are starting with SMBC which isn't overly sweet to begin with, so adding a bit of caramel to it doesn't make it cloying at all. You can also sub packed brown sugar for the white sugar and get a nice caramel flavor too.

SMBC doesn't crust so you can't use the viva or any of those methods to smooth it. But it is very easy to get smooth with a spatula and a bench scraper.

Thank you very much!