Caramel Cake

Three layers. Any filling. Caramel decorations.

That was the brief for the showstopper challenge during Caramel Week. (Apparently, the cake didn’t have to be caramel-flavored — the bakers in the Great White Tent offered various iterations, from red velvet to poppyseed.)

Oh, and the judges wanted to see spun sugar in the decorations.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I didn’t use spun sugar on this cake. I’ve done spun sugar before, even in my very first showstopper (although I didn’t get it dark enough that first time around). Spun sugar is messy. It gets all over the floor, even when you put newspapers down, and on your clothing. But I did incorporate caramel in other ways:

• The coffee French buttercream filling uses a coffee extract made by first making caramel and then stirring in a strong espresso concentrate until the caramel is dissolved.
• I made walnut praline to sprinkle around the top edge of the cake.
• Lastly, I created a caramel collar to go around the cake.

As for the flavor profile, I wanted the combination of cake, filling and frosting to complement the caramel while, at the same time, counteracting its sweetness. For the cake itself, I chose to use walnuts, which carry a slight bitterness, and aromatic spices, creating a perfect foil for the sweet caramel. Likewise, the coffee filling added its own counterbalance of flavor, and the cream cheese frosting provided a tangy, creamy finish to the overall profile of the cake.

I started with Mary Berry’s recipe for walnut cake that she used for the technical challenge in the 2015 season of The Great British Baking Show. I added my own combination of spices and increased the amount of walnuts to enhance the flavor.

For the coffee filling, I turned to this tried-and-true recipe that I’ve used numerous times, here, here and here.

Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream, a Revelation

When it came to the frosting, I wanted something more sophisticated than the American version of cream cheese frosting, which is simply a mixture of cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar. I searched for a way of combining Swiss meringue buttercream with cream cheese and found a few recipes that called for making a regular batch of Swiss meringue buttercream and combining a portion of it (usually around 10 oz.) with a block of softened cream cheese. But the recipe developers warned that adding any more than that would loosen the buttercream. Then I found this one by Claire Saffitz.

Claire discovered that the reason adding cream cheese to Swiss meringue buttercream turns it into a soupy mess is that cream cheese has a lot more moisture than butter. In order to counteract that, she used a natural cream cheese that doesn’t contain stabilizers (think guar gum, xanthan gum or carob bean gum), which prevent the liquids from separating from the solids. She then pressed the cream cheese between paper towels for a few hours so the liquid soaked into the paper towels. Her cream cheese lost about 28% of its weight in liquid. Once she reduced the liquid, Claire was able to substitute about half of the butter in her Swiss meringue buttercream recipe with cream cheese. She simply creamed the butter and cream cheese together before adding it to the meringue.

Following her lead, I used Tillamook brand cream cheese. Its contents, according to the package, include only cultured pasteurized milk and cream, pasteurized skim milk, and sea salt. After pressing the 8 oz. brick overnight between paper towels, weighed down with my cast iron Dutch oven, it lost 2.4 oz. of liquid, resulting in cream cheese with about 50% fat instead of its original 36% fat. (Butter, by comparison, is about 79% fat.)

When I added the butter/cream cheese mixture to my meringue, it seemed to curdle, so I followed the advice found on the internet and warmed it over a simmering water bath, just until the edges started to melt. After I transferred it back to the mixer, the buttercream came right back together again, all smooth and creamy, just the way it’s supposed to be.

Caramel — Wet or Dry?

Once my cake was filled and frosted. It was time for the caramel decorations.

I’ve learned a thing or two since the last time I made caramel. Mostly, I’ve learned that the addition of acid (e.g., lemon juice or cream of tartar) or corn syrup (or, alternatively, glucose syrup) will help to prevent the sugar from crystallizing as it melts. This is because the acid “inverts” the sucrose into glucose and fructose — simpler sugars that are less prone to crystallize. Corn syrup is already an invert sugar, mostly glucose, and these smaller sugar molecules come between the sucrose molecules, interfering with crystal formation.

For my walnut praline, I stuck with the traditional, dry method, borrowing this recipe from my Coffee and Walnut Dobos Torte. It is less prone to crystallization than the wet method, but it will burn quickly if you don’t keep a close eye on it. Learn from my mistakes and have a bowl of ice water ready to stick the pan into as soon as you take it off the heat to stop it from cooking longer.

For the caramel collar, I used this recipe, minus the red food coloring. (This was the only example I could find of a cake with a caramel collar that wasn’t simply spun sugar.) My first attempt failed, as I tried to create the lacy look I was after while the caramel was too hot and runny. The second try worked! I really like the artistic flair this gives my cake — a unique, professional finish that really takes it to the next level. 

With the little bit of caramel I had left, I made a few curls for the top. This is less messy than “spinning” the sugar. As the caramel starts to harden, you dip a fork in it and wrap it around a dowel or a knife-sharpening steel that’s been coated with butter. It hardens almost instantly, so you can slide it off and make another one. Continue until the caramel is too cool to work with.

I was so pleased with how this cake turned out that I didn’t want to simply cut it up and distribute pieces to my friends, so I took the whole thing (after cutting a slice for me and my husband) to my local library to share it with the staff. They said it was fabulous!

I’ve divided this recipe into its individual parts so that you can decide which elements you want to make. The cake would be fabulous alone, perhaps baked in a 9-by-13-inch pan, as a breakfast cake with a mug of coffee. Or you could bake it in layers and spread the cream cheese frosting between the layers and on top for a “naked cake” look. Any way you stack it, or slice it, it’s going to be delicious!