Saturday, November 29, 2008

Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting: Daring Bakers Challenge November 2008

I was really thrilled to be able to make my first cake as part of the Daring Bakers. (Just to clarify -- it's my first cake with the group, not my first challenge. :) ) I really liked how the consistency of the cake turned out -- the batter was smooth and wonderful -- and the frosting too came out great. Unfortunately this was one of those cakes that was far too sweet for me. I have a sweet tooth, but it has its limitations. It's a shame, too, because the cake was dense and moist, and the browned butter in the frosting gave it a sensational flavor.



Info for this month's challenge:

Here we've got the start of the caramel syrup.

And many minutes later... I ended up, like most DBs probably, with a lot of the syrup leftover. Since I knew from just reading the recipe and from the comments other DBs had made on the forums that the cake was going to be extremely sweet, while making the frosting I opted to moisten it with heavy cream rather than more sugar. The leftover caramel syrup is now being used to sweeten my hot teas!

Here's the cake cooling -- the instructions didn't say whether it should be cooled in the pan or not, so I opted to do a bit of both.

The finished cake! It actually turned out fairly well (for me). I made it a two-layer cake because there was so much frosting. I still need much, much more practice in frosting a cake -- even using the method of "pre-frosting" it with a thin layer before putting on a thicker layer didn't quite work -- a lot of crumbs still got into the final frosting (though you can't tell so much in the picture). That could also be because I was rushing through this -- I was late to meet my cousin for dinner so the cake might not have been entirely cooled. I drizzled the whole thing with the leftover caramel syrup, since I had so much of it.

My original plan had been to decorate it with pieces of caramel candy, but I hadn't gotten around to making it yet, alas!

4 comments:

Ruth said...

great first challenge your cake looks delicious

Sherry Trifle - Lovely Cats said...

It's a lovely cake! Looks absolutely delicious. Welcome on board.

Payal Shah said...

Congratulations on your first challenge. I like the rich caramel color on your frosting.

nikkita said...

Gorgeous and very homey :) Absolutely love your presentation!