These are the results of another sweet making experiment using my Hope & Greenwood cookery book! Now, these did not go quite according to plan… I thought I had made every effort to follow the recipe to the letter, but unfortunately my chewy caramels didn’t come out as they should have done – they are far too soft! When the caramel came out of the tin there was no chance of cutting it into chunks with scissors as the recipe suggested. It was very stretchy and quite challenging to handle. I decided I would roll the caramel into balls and then wrap those in twists of baking paper as directed, but they were too soft even for that. I couldn’t decide what to do with them and then I remembered that I had some mini cupcake cases, so I dropped my caramel balls into those. They did not stay spherical – oh no – they spread out and filled the cases!
After that I decided to put them in the fridge where they did firm up a bit. Everyone liked the flavour but they really were too soft. I think that maybe the problem was that I didn’t dissolve the sugar thoroughly. Does anyone out there know if that would cause my caramel to be so stretchy?! I know I must have done something wrong and would love to work out what it was as the taste of these is wonderful. They just don’t look anywhere near as attractive as the lovely photo in the book, which I found disappointing. But I won’t let it put me off learning to make sweets…
KM
Lavender Sugar 
I reckon it’s something to do with the temperature of the sugar – did you have to boil it until it reached a certain temperature? I rely on my sugar thermometer for everything these days!
Yes, I did have to do that – twice – as you have to add a cream mixture to the sugar mixture and then bring it up to 112 degrees again! I was using the sugar thermometer, but still had this problem, which is why I was wondering if I had not dissolved the sugar well enough before boiling it…