Daring bakers

Caramel cake with caramelized butter frosting

(and optional caramels)








This months challenge was co-hosted by Dolores from Culinary curiosity, Alex from Blondie and brownie and Jenny from Foray into food.

The recipe this month was caramel cake with caramelized butter frosting, this recipe comes from Shuna Fish Lydon from Eggbeater.

This recipe involved making a caramel syrup, cake and frosting and to be honest I felt it was sugar overload but I went with it. The Caramel syrup freaked me out a little, it involved making a syrup with sugar and water and when the syrup was ready adding cold water to it, I was surprised actually that the syrup was a success, I imagined it seizing and setting in a big candy ball.

It looked like maple syrup and was tooth achingly sweet.

I decided to make cupcakes instead of a individual cake. The cake was a doddle to make, pretty much a regular cake recipe but with some of the caramel syrup added to the mix. The uncooked batter tasted divine.

The cooked cake was more like a sweet bread than a cake, very dense, but delicious.

When the cupcakes were cooked and cooled I prepared my frosting. I've done a caramelized butter frosting before and loved it. First you need to cook your butter until it is brown, pour it through a sieve and leave to cool. The cooled butter is then used to make a butter icing with icing sugar and the caramel syrup, a little salt is added and believe me this icing is so sweet you need that salt.

It was a dream to work with and made a pretty cupcake but anymore than one of these and I'd be in trouble with my dentist.

Optional caramels:

Golden vanilla bean caramels recipe from Alice Medrichs.

This was a optional extra and I wasn't going to do it, I've made caramels very successfully before and I can't leave them alone, for the sake of my waist I was going to leave this recipe out. Then I had a brainwave and although it is this worse for my waist I still gave it a go.

Caramel hokey pokey ice cream, yum.

I followed the recipe provided, but I didn't take it so far so that it would set into caramel, I made the syrup and let it cool, basically I made caramel sauce. It was delicious, I ate a lot of it straight from the pan, so creamy and, well, caramell-y, lol.

Usually when doing something like this I would make my own ice cream, today I cheated and did something Dorie Greenspan suggests in her book, dressing up shop bought ice cream. I bought some very good quality vanilla ice cream and let it go softish, I mixed some crushed cinder toffee through and swirled with the caramel. The caramel went to toffee as it froze but melts again as the ice cream comes out of the freezer.

Very quick, such a cheat but so, so delicious. Any ice cream lover has to try this, I have hidden it in the depths of the deep freeze for Christmas.

The original recipes can be found on the hosts blogs. Thanks to this months hosts Dolores, Alex and Jenny, don't forget to check out their blogs and the other Daring bakers blogs on the blog roll.