to fill a chocolate pound cake. Wondering if I could just melt caramels with heavy cream and use that....or would it be too runny? Just want a rich, thick caramel between the layers. Not sure a caramel frosting would really taste as good...too fluffy. Help please! Need it for this weekend.

You should be able to just melt the caramels with a splash of cream. Remember that when caramel is hot, it is liquid. Cool it a bit and fill the cake (make sure you have piped a good dam of icing to hold it in if necessary). Make sure the cake doesn't get refrigerated, otherwise the caramel will turn rock hard!

I made a caramel filling with an 8 oz jar of caramel ice cream topping, 1 cup powdered sugar, and one 8 oz. package of cream cheese. I made it last week and brought the cake and extra filling to my office. My boss took the bowl of filling home with her! She just wanted the filling. It was so good!

thanks so much for the ideas....i think i might try the one with the ice cream topping/pwd sugar/crm chs...sounds like it might work! But I'm going to have to refrigerate the cake at least overnight...I live in Fairhope, AL...about 25 miles from the Gulf of Mexico...it's soooooo hot & humid here, that if I leave the cake out on the counter, I'd have to turn my AC down to like 50 degrees or something to keep it from melting...lol. If I used your idea, Dawn, would the filling get too thick/hard if refrigerated? And I'm not sure what an icing dam is....do you just pipe a line of icing around the whole circumference and at the edge of the cake? Will it bulge after it's stacked?

Thanks....Jennifer

You will definitely want to refrigerate the cake, because immediately after mixing the filling will be a little thin. (If it's too thin, add more powdered sugar) Remember, the filling will get thicker in the cold temperature of your refrigerator too. You definitely need to pipe an icing dam around the layers too. I made mine pretty thick, so the filling wouldn't seep out and bulge. You shouldn't have any problems with bulging if your dams are made with stiff consistency frosting. My cake was two layer stacked and it was fine.

P.S. Forgot to mention...I live in northeast Texas. It's 98 degrees here today, humidity is 80%, and the heat index is 110. I understand your problems with heat and humidity.

An icing dam is a line or two of thick consistency buttercream icing that prevents the filling from seeping out. It is thick consistancy to prevent icing bulges. I usually pipe it onto the cake with the tip off, and just the coupler in the bag. For leaky filling, I will sometimes pipe two rows next to each other, but usually one thick row will suffice. I sometimes press it into the cake a bit to make sure I have a good seal. make sure your filling does NOT go above the top of your icing dam, or it will leak over the top.

Good luck!

I take a can of sweet condenced milk and put the can in a pot with about 3/4 full. Turn the can upside down and boil it on med/high for 3 hours and you have homemade caramel. I would take some heavy whipping cream and whip it till you get nice peaks. and then fold it in to the caramel mixture.
This has to be refrigerated because of the cream.

For the caramel filling recipe that uses cream cheese - if i filled cupcakes with it - would they have to be refrigerated?

I would say yes - pretty much anything with cream cheese in it needs to be refrigerated. You know, the whole dairy thing...LOL. Butter, cream, cream cheese, etc. Unless it's cooked into something, it should always be refrigerated, I believe. HTH!

what a bummer - i personally don't like cold cupcakes...guess I'll just go with chocolate buttercream instead. If I had more time I'd try the sweetened condensed milk approach....maybe over the weekend.

Mr warnke,
You can always let them come to room temp before serving them. I won't hurt them to be out for an hour or so. But extended periods should be refrigerated.

I did the sweetened cond. milk version this past week (boiling for 3 hrs) and it turned out wonderful. The caramel was thick enough that I didn't even mix cream with it. I just put a dam around it and layered it between a chocolate mud cake. It was like eating a caramel brownie, yummy! I would definetly recommend this caramel filling.