The story of another recipe I Pintested.
Last weekend we got to celebrate Christmas with my in-laws who live out of state, at my sister-in-law's house about an hour away. We had dinner, opened presents, talked and hung out, and the next day set up a cookie factory in the kitchen, where we each busted out 4 dozen of our choice, to share with everyone. A very nice, Christmas-y weekend spent with family we love, and it felt like a Christmas bonus because it was so early in the month.
Since my sister-in-law (known from here on out as SIL. Typing sister-in-law each time is just a lot of typing) and her husband hosted, they supplied the main dish (ham) and a couple side dishes, and my bro-in-law (BIL) and his wife brought a salad. 'Our family' was in charge of dessert. Which means I was in charge of dessert.
SIL and I had discussed cake options one night, while geeking out on Pinterest, of course. Where else? I naturally have a 'sweet treats' board - who doesn't? - so it was pretty easy to find a bunch of recipes that looked awesome. I must have been feeling ambitious, or just crazy, or had a hankering for something with salted caramel...or all of the above...because I picked this recipe and decided I was all over this cake.
Hey, I've made some pretty awesome cakes in my day. I'm no rookie to the scratch cake business. I'm not trying to claim that I am good at frosting them, but dang it I can bake! I had never made candy nor ever used a candy thermometer, and I actually passed up Martha Stewarts Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake recipe because it involved the thermometer, the recipe I ended up with used one anyway. Whatever. So picking a scratch cake recipe wasn't daunting to me at all. Sure, this one included making 2 separate batches of caramel, but what the heck? How complicated can it be when it only involves 3 ingredients?
Yeah, let's just call my inexperience with caramel oversight #1.
Here's what I was looking at:
**Let me interject here for a second and say that this cake was a 2-day process. It had to be ready for dinner Saturday evening, and I started assembling ingredients and mixing things up Friday afternoon. It wasn't until Friday night that I got the candy thermometer, and Saturday morning when I actually tried to make the caramel for the first time.**
Friday night I mixed the first half of the ganache, and the dry ingredients for the cake batter. I got out my cake saver, cooling racks, tools, pots (the wrong pots), and lined up my cold ingredients that had to come out and be warmed up before I could use them. SO PREPARED was I, and if you know me you know how uncharacteristic of me that is.
Have you ever made caramel before? I mean the water, sugar, corn syrup boiled up together kind of caramel? Let me tell you, it's a real sonofabitch. Apparently, the higher the quality of your cookware, the less chance you have of this stuff turning out. I've got really nice stainless steel cookware with the aluminum core blah blah, that is GREAT for doing everything in the world, except this apparently. That aluminum core retained too much heat, and I burned batch after rotten batch, until I figured out what was going on and switched out my pot.
I know I've mentioned this many times before, but I am quite a bargain hunter. Some time ago I picked up two copper Revereware pots at my local Goodwill - they couldn't have been more than $3 each. I don't use them all the time because I end up burning the crap out of everything in them, because they are thin and conduct heat VERY well, and they aren't non-stick, so even macaroni and cheese becomes a problem. Well, it's a damn good thing I had those pots, cause they surely saved the day.
At this point you may be wondering where's all the pictures, yo? Yeah, I was pretty much ready to empty out all my cabinets and throw everything out the window, so taking pictures was the LAST thing on my mind. So, sorry.
So here's the thing: mix the 3 ingredients together (water, sugar, corn syrup), put over high heat with the thermometer, and wait till it gets to 350 degrees, remove from heat and stir in this, that, and that. Ok, we wouldn't normally consider this rocket science, but believe me, IT IS. Anyway, the third? fourth? batch, and the first in a copper pot ended up working Not well, mind you, but it at least resembled what I thought of as 'caramel' closely enough that I let it go. No one noticed that it wasn't evenly golden-tan, or that there were weird lumpy spots. And I'm not telling them. The last batch, which at this point was really going to be the last batch cause I was running out of ingredients, turned out pretty good.
I was already ready to throw the whole thing out, waste all the ingredients for the items I had already mixed together, and just go to the store and buy a cake. I mean, by the time I burned that last batch of caramel I had already worked on the cake for at least 5 hours. 5 hours!! Who makes a cake for 5 hours, let alone not even being close to done at that point?! I hadn't even baked the actual cake part yet!
There was a lot of swearing involved. I mean, I bitched out this cake like it was messing with my life on purpose. Which it might have been.
Well, all's well that ends well, I guess. Once I got the caramel to do its thing, I was able to quickly do the rest, and even take a shower while the layers were in the oven. Each layer got a coating of Caramel Batch #4, then a layer of Chocolate Ganache. 8 HOURS LATER... I ended up transporting it with the layers in place, but the cake overall was unfrosted, which I did when I got to SIL's house.
The cake batter was a lovely thing, too. Nice and foamy, light and chocolately without being overly sweet...in fact there wasn't any aspect of this cake that was super sweet. (The taste was PERFECT). The recipe called for 3 - 8" layers, but I ended up with 4. Hey, 4 layers looks impressive, even if it does have a slight lean to it.
Here is a pic of what it ended up looking like after the first round was served:
I was so pissed at this cake that it crossed my mind to boycott and not eat any. Of course, I came to my senses. I had to see for myself how it turned out, and I have to say that this is one of the richest desserts I have ever encountered in my life. I'm sure it didn't help that I hadn't fully digested my dinner when I threw this down on top of it, but oh boy was I forcing the last couple of bites. (If, in a moment of insanity, you decide to try this recipe, when it comes time to dishing it out I highly recommend SLIM pieces). It's so rich, but I have to say I am glad I didn't toss it out the window of the car. May Christmas miracles never cease.
I had another piece of the leftover cake once we got home, and I have to admit, it's pretty damn good. I was sure to tell everyone to savor every bite because the possibility of them seeing this cake come out of my kitchen ever again is slim to none.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
This is a cake for eating, not making. Suggest it for someone else to make and bring to a gathering you will be present at so you can enjoy the fruit of their labor. If they don't throw it out the car window on the way to the party, that is.
If you're crazy enough to attempt this, here's the recipe for the cake. Mine did NOT look like the one in the pic, FYI. I should have gotten a pic of how lopsided it was, though truly, it didn't matter. Anyway, GOOD LUCK.
And if you were wondering what cookies I made (from the first paragraph), here's that. Now those I highly recommend! Compared to the cake they were...a piece of cake!
Last weekend we got to celebrate Christmas with my in-laws who live out of state, at my sister-in-law's house about an hour away. We had dinner, opened presents, talked and hung out, and the next day set up a cookie factory in the kitchen, where we each busted out 4 dozen of our choice, to share with everyone. A very nice, Christmas-y weekend spent with family we love, and it felt like a Christmas bonus because it was so early in the month.
Since my sister-in-law (known from here on out as SIL. Typing sister-in-law each time is just a lot of typing) and her husband hosted, they supplied the main dish (ham) and a couple side dishes, and my bro-in-law (BIL) and his wife brought a salad. 'Our family' was in charge of dessert. Which means I was in charge of dessert.
SIL and I had discussed cake options one night, while geeking out on Pinterest, of course. Where else? I naturally have a 'sweet treats' board - who doesn't? - so it was pretty easy to find a bunch of recipes that looked awesome. I must have been feeling ambitious, or just crazy, or had a hankering for something with salted caramel...or all of the above...because I picked this recipe and decided I was all over this cake.
Hey, I've made some pretty awesome cakes in my day. I'm no rookie to the scratch cake business. I'm not trying to claim that I am good at frosting them, but dang it I can bake! I had never made candy nor ever used a candy thermometer, and I actually passed up Martha Stewarts Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake recipe because it involved the thermometer, the recipe I ended up with used one anyway. Whatever. So picking a scratch cake recipe wasn't daunting to me at all. Sure, this one included making 2 separate batches of caramel, but what the heck? How complicated can it be when it only involves 3 ingredients?
Yeah, let's just call my inexperience with caramel oversight #1.
Here's what I was looking at:
- 1 batch of 'Salted Caramel' - caramel mixed with cream and some other stuff
- 1 batch of 'Whipped Caramel Ganache' - dark chocolate ganache with another batch of caramel mixed together with a TON of butter. So this was actually 2 parts - the caramel, and everything else.
- 1 batch of 'Sour Cream Chocolate Cake' - yes, there was even actual cake batter involved.
**Let me interject here for a second and say that this cake was a 2-day process. It had to be ready for dinner Saturday evening, and I started assembling ingredients and mixing things up Friday afternoon. It wasn't until Friday night that I got the candy thermometer, and Saturday morning when I actually tried to make the caramel for the first time.**
Friday night I mixed the first half of the ganache, and the dry ingredients for the cake batter. I got out my cake saver, cooling racks, tools, pots (the wrong pots), and lined up my cold ingredients that had to come out and be warmed up before I could use them. SO PREPARED was I, and if you know me you know how uncharacteristic of me that is.
Have you ever made caramel before? I mean the water, sugar, corn syrup boiled up together kind of caramel? Let me tell you, it's a real sonofabitch. Apparently, the higher the quality of your cookware, the less chance you have of this stuff turning out. I've got really nice stainless steel cookware with the aluminum core blah blah, that is GREAT for doing everything in the world, except this apparently. That aluminum core retained too much heat, and I burned batch after rotten batch, until I figured out what was going on and switched out my pot.
I know I've mentioned this many times before, but I am quite a bargain hunter. Some time ago I picked up two copper Revereware pots at my local Goodwill - they couldn't have been more than $3 each. I don't use them all the time because I end up burning the crap out of everything in them, because they are thin and conduct heat VERY well, and they aren't non-stick, so even macaroni and cheese becomes a problem. Well, it's a damn good thing I had those pots, cause they surely saved the day.
At this point you may be wondering where's all the pictures, yo? Yeah, I was pretty much ready to empty out all my cabinets and throw everything out the window, so taking pictures was the LAST thing on my mind. So, sorry.
So here's the thing: mix the 3 ingredients together (water, sugar, corn syrup), put over high heat with the thermometer, and wait till it gets to 350 degrees, remove from heat and stir in this, that, and that. Ok, we wouldn't normally consider this rocket science, but believe me, IT IS. Anyway, the third? fourth? batch, and the first in a copper pot ended up working Not well, mind you, but it at least resembled what I thought of as 'caramel' closely enough that I let it go. No one noticed that it wasn't evenly golden-tan, or that there were weird lumpy spots. And I'm not telling them. The last batch, which at this point was really going to be the last batch cause I was running out of ingredients, turned out pretty good.
I was already ready to throw the whole thing out, waste all the ingredients for the items I had already mixed together, and just go to the store and buy a cake. I mean, by the time I burned that last batch of caramel I had already worked on the cake for at least 5 hours. 5 hours!! Who makes a cake for 5 hours, let alone not even being close to done at that point?! I hadn't even baked the actual cake part yet!
There was a lot of swearing involved. I mean, I bitched out this cake like it was messing with my life on purpose. Which it might have been.
Well, all's well that ends well, I guess. Once I got the caramel to do its thing, I was able to quickly do the rest, and even take a shower while the layers were in the oven. Each layer got a coating of Caramel Batch #4, then a layer of Chocolate Ganache. 8 HOURS LATER... I ended up transporting it with the layers in place, but the cake overall was unfrosted, which I did when I got to SIL's house.
The cake batter was a lovely thing, too. Nice and foamy, light and chocolately without being overly sweet...in fact there wasn't any aspect of this cake that was super sweet. (The taste was PERFECT). The recipe called for 3 - 8" layers, but I ended up with 4. Hey, 4 layers looks impressive, even if it does have a slight lean to it.
Here is a pic of what it ended up looking like after the first round was served:
 | |
| See the salt on top? Yep, there it is. |
I was so pissed at this cake that it crossed my mind to boycott and not eat any. Of course, I came to my senses. I had to see for myself how it turned out, and I have to say that this is one of the richest desserts I have ever encountered in my life. I'm sure it didn't help that I hadn't fully digested my dinner when I threw this down on top of it, but oh boy was I forcing the last couple of bites. (If, in a moment of insanity, you decide to try this recipe, when it comes time to dishing it out I highly recommend SLIM pieces). It's so rich, but I have to say I am glad I didn't toss it out the window of the car. May Christmas miracles never cease.
I had another piece of the leftover cake once we got home, and I have to admit, it's pretty damn good. I was sure to tell everyone to savor every bite because the possibility of them seeing this cake come out of my kitchen ever again is slim to none.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
This is a cake for eating, not making. Suggest it for someone else to make and bring to a gathering you will be present at so you can enjoy the fruit of their labor. If they don't throw it out the car window on the way to the party, that is.
If you're crazy enough to attempt this, here's the recipe for the cake. Mine did NOT look like the one in the pic, FYI. I should have gotten a pic of how lopsided it was, though truly, it didn't matter. Anyway, GOOD LUCK.
And if you were wondering what cookies I made (from the first paragraph), here's that. Now those I highly recommend! Compared to the cake they were...a piece of cake!
No comments:
Post a Comment