Caramel Chocolate Cake
I love cake. I don’t think that’s any surprise. I also love chocolate and caramel. It’s just a winning combination. So, for the Superbowl party I made a caramel chocolate cake. Last year I made this amazing chocolate cake. I mean it was fantastic. Probably the best cake I’ve ever made. I wanted to just recreate it but I didn’t have any cookies. Lame. I did have caramel however so I used that.
I started out by making two 8 in chocolate cakes. Then I cut each one in two. I made this a four layer cake. Kind of fun. Here’s another four layer chocolate turtle cake I made a few years ago for my husbands birthday. I put a layer of frosting for the dam for the filling. Then made a lot of semi sweet chocolate ganache and filled each layer just like this.
Here’s what it looked like from the side, you can see all the layers!
This time I didn’t do my frosting perfect. It’s a rustic cake. I say that to make myself feel better. The frosting I made actually bombed on me and turned out to be too lumpy to do anything with. But it was good frosting so in the end it didn’t matter.
Then I melted caramel and poured it over top, once it was cooled enough that it wouldn’t melt the frosting. That would have turned out horrible. Make sure the caramel cools or you’ll end up with a big pool of caramel frosting at the bottom of your cake.
At first I thought, yeah I’m done. Looks good nothing more I can do, then I found the heath bar bits. I put them on top for an added crunch to the cake. It was a fun cake to make and it was nice to make a cake that didn’t have to be perfectly frosted.
Rustic, my new favorite kind of cake.
CARAMEL CHOCOLATE CAKE
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 chocolate box cake mix
3 eggs
1/2 cup plain low fat yogurt
1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine all ingredients and mix until everything is incorporated. Put batter in two 8 inch pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean when inserted in middle.
GANACHE:
1/4 cup milk (half and half or cream if you want it richer)
1 cup chocolate (I used all chocolate chips, worked fine)
Boil milk for 2 minutes and then pour over chocolate. Stir until chocolate is melted and combined with milk. If it isn’t thick enough you can put it in the refrigerator to cool and become thicker. Then spoon in middle of layers.
CARAMEL BUTTERCREAM
Frosting:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
16 oz. powder sugar (1lb.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat and stir in brown sugar and milk. Bring to a boil, and put in a mixing bowl. Add powder sugar and vanilla. Beat with a mixer until it reaches a spreading consistency. More milk may be needed to reach the consistency you want. Add milk a teaspoon at a time. (This is not the frosting I used for this cake but this recipe will work much better than the one I used.)
