SALTED CARAMEL AND POPCORN CAKE
January 25, 2019
Hey everyone and a very happy Friday to you all!
We're back with another baking post but this time it's a whole cake. We rarely make cakes rather than cupcakes but they are so much fun to make and eat!
This cake was a birthday cake for our cousins 18th birthday so it's a mixture of his favourite things / his requests.
We're back with another baking post but this time it's a whole cake. We rarely make cakes rather than cupcakes but they are so much fun to make and eat!
This cake was a birthday cake for our cousins 18th birthday so it's a mixture of his favourite things / his requests.
All of the elements of the cake work so well together especially the popcorn and salted caramel sauce. The cake itself is a classic vanilla, filled with a plain butter cream but with the sneaky addition of a pool of salted caramel sauce between the layers. That in itself is just delicious, but cover the cake in salted caramel buttercream and top it with a salted caramel drip, chocolate shards, popcorn, fudge, maltesers and more chocolate and you have yourselves a winner. It's an incredible cake that not only looks good but tastes divine.
It's leaving our mouths watering just thinking about it!
AND it really isn't that hard so get your apron on and get baking!!
So we actually gave our cake 5 layers - we made 6 and then decided that was too tall and ate one - but we would recommend just 4 layers. The recipe below is for the 4 layers but if you want it taller you can always multiply up, but honestly, we don't think you will need it.
And an important little tip - make sure you use toffee popcorn as this will last much better than normal and hopefully shouldn't get soft before you get to eat it.
Let the baking commence...
Ingredients:
For the cake...
(makes 4 x 8 inch sponges)
12oz butter
12oz caster sugar
6 eggs
12oz flour
6tsp baking powder
4tsp vanilla extract
For the salted caramel sauce...
125g unsalted butter, chopped
125g double cream
250g brown sugar
1/4-1/2tsp salt (to taste)
For the plain buttercream...
10oz unsalted butter, softened
20oz icing sugar
For the salted caramel buttercream...
5oz unsalted butter, softened
10oz icing sugar
4-5tbsp salted caramel sauce
For the chocolate shards...
150g dark chocolate
crushed toffee popcorn
fudge pieces
edible glitter/gold stars (optional)
For decoration...
toffee popcorn, maltesers, fudge pieces, fudge bars
(OR any of your favourite chocolates!)
Preheat your oven to 200°C/180°C Fan/Gas mark 6 and grease and line four 8 inch cake tins.
We only had two tins, and so divided the ingredients in half and repeated the below steps twice. Cake batter doesn't like to sit around for two long so if you don't have 4 tins, it's best to repeat the steps rather than leaving it to sit and risking the bake of your cakes.
Start by beating together the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Then, beat in the eggs and vanilla extract. Finally, add in the flour and baking powder and mix until combined into a smooth batter. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake tins and level the tops.
As a special trick to make our cakes as level as possible we use the cold towel technique. Take strips of towel and soak them in cold water, wring out the excess water and wrap them around the cake tin. Secure the towel in the place with a pin or elastic band.
Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes until golden and the tops of the cakes spring back when lightly pressed with a finger. Turn out the cakes onto a wire rack and peel off the greaseproof paper. Set aside to cool completely.
The next step is to make the salted caramel sauce so that this can cool and thicken before use. Place the butter in a saucepan over a low heat and allow to melt completely. Once melted, add the sugar and cream. Increase to a medium heat and stir to combine. Allow the sugar to dissolve completely, stirring occasionally, and then add the salt to taste. (Remember: this will be VERY hot!) Leave the sauce to simmer gently for two minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool to room temperature and thicken.
For best results when making the chocolate shards, the chocolate needs to be tempered.
The temperatures differ slightly for the different chocolate so the below temperatures are for dark/plain chocolate only.
Start by chopping up the chocolate into small pieces. Finely chop about 1/4 of the chocolate and place into the fridge/freezer. Melt the other 3/4 either in the microwave or over a pan of hot water and bring it up to 55-58°C. When it reaches this temperature, quickly take it off the heat, add your finely chopped frozen chocolate and stir to reduce the temperature down to 28-29°C. If you need a little help stand your bowl of melted chocolate into a bowl filled with cold water (not too cold though), it really speeds up the process. When you have it down to the required temperature, you want to bring it back up to 31-32°C. Make sure not to heat it up any higher or you will have to start all over again.
Spread the chocolate thinly onto a lined baking tray, and scatter over the popcorn and fudge pieces - we added a little extra sprinkling of edible glitter and gold stars too! Then put aside to set for around 30 mins.
To make the buttercream for inside the cake, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Then slowly beat in the icing sugar one big spoonful at a time. You may need to add more icing sugar if the buttercream is not thick enough at this point but just keep adding one spoonful at a time until you get the right consistency.
Now you're ready to start building the cake.
Place your first layer of cake onto a plate or cake board using a little bit of buttercream to secure down. You want to alternate the layers of filling with and without salted caramel sauce. So, if you're using 4 layers then you will want to do a layer of buttercream with sauce, a layer without and then finish with a layer again with sauce. For the layers with sauce you will need to create an indent in the buttercream to be able to hold the pool of sauce. You can do this in two ways: either spread on a generous layer of buttercream and use a spoon to make an indent, or spread an even layer of buttercream on the sponge and then pipe a ring of buttercream on top of that to create a wall and smooth out using a palette knife. Pour the salted caramel sauce into the indent and then place the next sponge on top.
For the next layer simply spread on a generous layer of buttercream.Try to keep the sponge as level as possible as you build, using the buttercream to help you if it starts to go a bit wonky.
Place the third sponge on top of that and top with the buttercream and salted caramel filling before topping the cake with the final sponge.
To cover the cake we used a salted caramel buttercream. Make this in the same way as before but add the salted caramel sauce to the butter before then gradually adding the icing sugar. Create a crumb coating on the cake by thinly spreading buttercream all around the edges and on the top of cake. This doesn't need to be thick it just needs to trap all the crumbs so that the next layer will be crumb free. Try to keep the edges as straight and as smooth as possible.
After leaving the first layer to set for at least 10 minutes, you can spread on the next layer. Using the rest of the buttercream, completely cover the cake as thinly or thickly as you would like.
Once you have left the final layer of buttercream to dry slightly you can add the salted caramel drip. For best results, put the sauce into a bottle or piping bag and pipe the sauce around the edge, squeezing at intervals to create the drip. The longer the squeeze the longer the drip! Once you've gone all the way round the cake squeeze the remaining sauce over the top of the cake and spread to evenly cover.
Start decorating the cake, shards first. You can break this up by hand or by using a knife for straighter edges. Once those are placed you can go crazy with the rest if the decorations. We like to mix it up a bit by chopping some of the chocolates and fudges in half. We created a cascade of popcorn down one side for a dramatic effect, but you can decorate with the popcorn, fudge and chocolates however you want.
We think this cake is perfect for any celebration. Or even just a bit of weekend baking to share with family and friends!
Thanks so much for reading this post, we really hope you liked it!
Please let us know what you think, and feel free to leave your favourite flavours or bakes below, and we will be sure to give them a try!
Please let us know what you think, and feel free to leave your favourite flavours or bakes below, and we will be sure to give them a try!
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Antonia and Imogen x
