Sunday, November 30, 2008

Daring Bakers Challenge - Caramel Cake

Recipe: Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting courtesy of Shuna Fish Lydon (http://eggbeater.typepad.com/), as published on Bay Area Bites (http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/).

Hosted By: Dolores (http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com/) and co-hostedAlex (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/).

This challenge sounded great to me. Not to difficult and something I wouldn’t normally try. I started about 3:30 PM on a Sunday afternoon and I finished the caramel syrup, cake (cupcakes), frosting and the optional caramels by 7 PM. Not too bad in my opinion.

The caramel syrup directions were a little lacking in my opinion, I am more exact than just a particular color, and I am not sure that I ever got this right. It smelled like molasses to me. I started working on the cake and the frosting next. I am not a huge fan of clarified/browned butter; the smell is just not appetizing to me so I wasn’t too thrilled with how my kitchen started to smell as I browned the butter. The cake went together quickly as I expected and I was able to make 18 cupcakes from this recipe. I probably should have gone with 14 for a more generous serving but I am not too concerned with the size. The cupcakes took about 26 minutes to bake.

Next I started the caramels, these took way longer than I expected, from before 5 until 7. I used corn syrup in place of the golden syrup because I wasn’t able to find the golden syrup. I have seen recipes for caramels using this so I wasn’t to concerned. I had a difficult time determining the difference between energetically and violently. Nevertheless, they sure looked yummy. Waiting for them to cool was definitely difficult. While the caramels were cooking, I finished the frosting. I wouldn’t say I am a huge fan but I think it’s due to my predisposed dislike of browned butter. The cupcakes frosted quickly and were ok. I put them in the freezer for future need.

Pictures tomorrow since I can't find the cord for my camera. I can read them at work tomorrow.

3 Comments:

Blogger JS said...

Yay!!!

I too had a problem with "energetically and violently" and dark and not so dark molasses amber. The directions needed to be a bit clearer.

But the cake was easy!

9:55 AM  
Blogger Gretchen Noelle said...

Great job getting this challenge done! Hope you enjoyed the taste!

11:03 PM  
Blogger Seth said...

Very cool about the luge championship! USA!

2:35 PM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home