Saturday, November 29, 2008

Daring Bakers - Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting

This month's Daring Bakers' Challenge was all about sugar. I was a little uneasy about baking it since it required making a caramel sauce. I've tried making caramel in the past with some not very good results & a nasty pan to clean up. But the Daring Bakers is all about challenging yourself to try new things so I went ahead & dove in.
Daring Bakers Caramel Cake
Actually, making the caramel sauce that gets used in both the cake & the frosting was a lot easier than I expected & I was quite please with my results. I decided to just do half of the recipe, since there is only two of us, & make it into a two layer 4.5-inch cake. I actually ended up having enough cake batter to make the cake & two cupcakes. We ate the cupcakes out of the oven without any frosting & let me tell you this is one good cake! It's a little denser than some cakes & quite moist.
Daring Bakers Caramel Cake
The frosting is made with brown butter, a flavor we just love. Many other Bakers thought it was too sweet but we didn't think so. I added a little extra sugar like a few people suggested & the final flavor was like that of a salted caramel, yum! To decorate the cake I put my caramel sauce back on the stove & let it cook a little while longer. I then drizzled the hot caramel on parchment paper to create different shapes. Once the caramel sauce cooled I had hard candy shapes to use on the cake.
Daring Bakers Caramel Cake
You can get the recipe by Shuna Fish Lyndon on Bay Area Bites. Thanks to Dolores at Culinary Curiosity, Alex at Blondie & Brownie and Jenny at Foray into Food for hosting what has probably been my favorite challenge yet. Natalie at Gluten-a-Go-Go helped out with making the recipe work for Alternative Bakers.

38 comments:

Stacey Snacks said...

Kat,
This is mighty impressive!

Renee said...

Great idea on using the caramel syrup for candied decorations. Great job!

Lori said...

I like your candied decorations. The cake is cute. My thermometer broke, bought a new one, then it broke. So now I am scared to make anything at 300 degrees. One of these days I am going to make hard candy.

It was so very yummy.

Anonymous said...

I love the way you did the caramel embellishment! Very upscale!

raquel said...

wow! wow! wow! very impressive indeed!

Anonymous said...

BEAUTIFUL presentation ,nicely done!!

Lauren said...

Ooo, your cake looks amazing! Love the decorations!

Anonymous said...

Your decorations look great!

Jersey Girl Cooks said...

Wow. I love the presentation.

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful cake! I love the sugar decorations!

Anonymous said...

I love the caramel sunbursts on top. Very pretty!

(I didn't know you could get cake pans that small. I may have to look into those so that I don't have so much guilt over baking a large cake when there's just 3 of us...)

Diana said...

Your cake is beautiful. It looks like art deco. You are so creative!

giz said...

my goodness - such a chi chi presentation. I'm glad you enjoyed the cake. Smart to downsize on the portions - big bold sugar.

Fit Chick said...

Good idea to make half a recipe! Love your decorations.

vibi said...

Beautiful Kat! The side beads look like glass bubbles and the top splashes like hands coming out of the cake... almost daliesque! Wonderful!

Anonymous said...

I love the look of the cake and the antlers of caramel. The icing is sprinkled with what? Thanks for the comments on my blog.

Amy said...

That sounds like the perfect sized cake - enough to enjoy but not overindulge! Wonderful job.

TeaLady said...

Love the shapes on top. Very impressive.

allison said...

I love your decorations. Your cake looks great.

Anonymous said...

The candy shapes is almost like a warning --- this cake has sugar.. lots of it. :)

Leslie said...

I love your decorations!
More sugar you added??? WOW. sugar coma?

Gretchen Noelle said...

Love the speckled frosting! You did a great job on this!

Dewi said...

What a beautiful cake. And those caramel decoration on your cake almost look like precious stones. Well done!

Lot-O-Choc said...

Wow yours is lovely, love the photos youve taken! Looks beautiful. Wonderful job!

Anonymous said...

addictive to that incredible buttercream frosting as well :) welcome to the club :op

PG said...

Looks really good! I like the decorations. It's interesting how people vary in their tolerance for sweetness.

Sandra Le Petrin said...

lovely decorations!
you wrote "I added a little extra sugar".. I guess you meant salt..!!

Jen said...

Your caramel decorations look great but I'm sort of wondering what consistency they were. My extra caramel stayed soft and extremely sticky so I'm wondering how you got your to actually hold a shape.

kat said...

Thanks everyone for all the great comments & those of you who caught it are right, I made a typo & meant we added extra salt to the frosting not sugar!

Jen - I cooked the caramel sauce a little more which seemed to make it harden for me.

Anonymous said...

Very nice. I wish I had followed what you had done and made half the recipe. Alas, there is sits, not being eaten. Oh, well. I think your cake looks amazing. I wish I could decorate a cake or at least have an idea of what to do. Well done.

Deborah said...

I love how you used the extra caramel to decorate - beautiful!

Unknown said...

I'm jealous, I must admit. I tried to do that with the caramel and mine never hardened! Would have been so cute! Oh, well. I'm with you on the icing...I loved it. :-) Great cake!

Esther said...

Great looking cake and I love the caramel decorations.

Ingrid_3Bs said...

What a fabulous looking cake. I love the caramel candy you made along with the yummy specks in the frosting!

Terrific photos, too!
~ingrid

Bex said...

Your cake came out great. I love the caramel splashes on top!

Namratha said...

This is very unique, a piece of art! Very nice!

Dolores said...

Artistic expression through burnt sugar... I love it! Great job. Thanks for baking with us.

Bruce said...

Thanks for a great Recipe
Christmas Candy Recipe

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