Caramel Cake

Prepare to grab your cookie pants, this week I will be posting numerous desserts that I made for my brothers engagement party. Congratulations Allan and Emma! They are the cutest couple, so in love.  To see my brother love and care for one of the most wonderful girls in the world make me incredibly happy.

I feel sorry for Emma as I bombarded her with ideas, and she willingly agreed to most of them!

The flavour of the cake was a delicious caramel, which is my brothers favourite flavour.

As a very very novice cook, I was extremely scared to tackle a) the cake itself, and b) home made caramel! I like making cupcakes for a reason, they generally don't sink on me. Cakes are another story, they like to be evil and burn, or dry out, or sink to the size of a pancake. It was a very stressful few hours.  I searched the internet for hours and even did a trial cake on the boyfriends family.

The cake was a success! My brother, the extremely fussy health eater loved the cake! I have officially been hired as the wedding cake maker, although they are waiting for me to do a few cake decorating classes first.

I trusted the recipe from Annie Eats, Annie is a wonderful food blogger and she was the first food blog that I got addicted to. Her recipes have never failed me and she is my go-to girl for any recipe that I need. I converted her yellow cake into a caramel cake. 

INGREDIENTS

Caramel  cake:

1 cup room temperature unsalted butter

1½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting pans

1½ cups cake flour

1 tbsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1¾ cups sugar

4 large eggs

2 tsp. caramel extract

1¼ cups milk

Caramel:

1/2 brown sugar

1/4 water

3 tblsp of milk

1 c icing sugar

Frosting:

500mL of thickened cream

4 tablespoons of caramel

METHOD

This recipe makes two 9 inch cakes, it is designed to be a layer cake. 

Fisrtly, preheat the oven to 180 degree, grease and line both your cake tins.

In a bowl, mix both flours, salt and baking powder. Blend the mixture well. 

If you have an electric mixer (you can use a hand held one, just prepare for the Arnie guns) combine the butter and sugar. For 4 minutes beat the butter and cream till light and fluffy, the mixture should turn a bit paler. 

Mix one egg at a time, making sure that each one is combined before you put the next one in.   Blend in the vanilla. 

 Turn mixer on low speed, in three alternate additions add the flour then the milk, keep beating.

Get a spoon and eat mixture...

 Or

Half the batter between the two cake tins. Now, this is when your own oven takes over, my cake took 40 minutes, however Annie's took 30-35. I find that if you open the oven before the 20 minutes mark the cake will sink-- so don't (I might of jumped on my dad when he tried to!) Insert a toothpick in the middle of the cake and if it comes out clean, the cake is ready to eat!

Let the cake cool for 20 minutes and remove from tin. 

To make caramel, combine 1/2 brown sugar and 1/4 cup of water. Let the caramel go amber, it will slowly change colour, when hot add a dash of milk and stir. In the electric mixer beat in icing sugar, just let it going till icing sugar is combined. This will make the caramel extremely sweet, you can avoid this step if you want to maintain the caramel taste.  Let it stand till cool. 

To make the frosting, whip cream till stiff peaks forms. Slowly, fold in one tablespoon of caramel at a time. This is when your own personal taste come in. I wanted my cream to be quite pale, by adding the caramel which is quite dark you will change the colour. So add as much caramel as you like, this is taste and colour that you have to determine. 

When layering the cake, make sure that any concave bits are cut off, otherwise it will not sit well. On the top of the 1st cake spread a layer of caramel, and a layer of frosting. Place the second cake on top of it and spread frosting all over the cake. Do this as neatly or rustic as you like. Decorate to your liking.

 Place in refrigerator whilst waiting to serve. Or just get a fork, right now and eat it. It was soo good!