November Daring Bakers Challenge 5

This month's challenge is Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting by Shuna Lydon. I had made a caramel cake once, but the cake itself is not Caramel. It was a hot milk cake that I just frosted with some caramel. I told myself back then that I would make a real caramel cake one day, and I just totally forgot about it.


The challenge had 3 components - the cake, the frosting and the caramel syrup.





The caramel syrup was a combination of cooked sugar and water, brought to a boil with amber color, then later on poured with a cup of water to stop the caramelization. It was quite tricky, and scary because of the spatter from the smoking caramel. This caramel syrup once cooled will be a common ingredient that will be used for both the cake and the frosting.

We were free to decide what size of cake to make for the caramel cake and I decided to make it using a 6x2 inch pan. With the full recipe, I was able to make 3 layers of cake. Making the cake was fairly easy, starting with creaming the butter and sugar, then adding the caramel syrup, eggs. Then the flour was added 3 parts with milk added in between. The cakes cooked for 30 minutes.

The frosting is new for me, in that it uses cooked butter. I had to cook the butter until it was brown, then add the confectioner's sugar, heavy cream, caramel syrup, vanilla and kosher salt.


To assemble the cake, I just stacked it one after the other with a thin layer of frosting in between. I crumb coated the cake, and then added rope weaves all over the cake. I then decorated it with a few pieces of leftover gumpaste flowers and butterflies that I had.


I had quite a few expectations about the cake because I made it later on when I had read comments about it being too sweet from fellow DBers. I even made a concious effort in adding a little more salt to the frosting to cut back on the sweetness.

So how was the final cake?

First of all to note, the smell of the final caramel cake was just divine. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I sliced a small piece of it to try and yes, the frosting was really a little sweet to my liking. Or maybe I'm not just used to frostings using confectioner's sugar. The cake, however, was very good. It was moist and the texture was fine. And the caramel flavor was wonderfully infused in the cake. Overall, it was a tasty cake and the challenge had been fun.



Special Thanks to:

• November's Challenge, Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting, is by Shuna Fish Lydon of http://eggbeater.typepad.com/
• Host for this month is Dolores (http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com), co-hosts are Alex (Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo: http://blondieandbrownie.blogspot.com/), Jenny of Foray into Food (http://forayintofood.blogspot.com/) and Natalie of Gluten-a-Go-Go (http://glutenagogo.blogspot.com/)