Caramel Cake

Ask me for a recipe, and I'll give it to you — duh, I have a food blog. Share the good times and tasty treats, I say! But some people keep recipes secret, and will not give them out to even their best friends and family. Where's the sense in that?

We have a relative in our family who makes the best caramel cake ever. Ever! It's her dish and her duty to bring it to every family and holiday gathering. Everyone looks forward to her caramel cake, and even lines up at the dessert table before hitting the main buffet line to assure that they get a piece. Outstanding cake!

But the recipe is a secret. It will die with her, and that is a shame. History and memories lost.A while back I tried to recreate her caramel cake using a recipe from A Gracious Plenty, a book by John T. Edge of collected recipes from the South, thinking that Mr. Edge probably rounded up a good caramel cake recipe. The cake was great, but the icing was not so great, and caramel cake is all about the icing.

Fast forward a few months, and, hello, September 2010 issue of Food and Wine magazine featuring a recipe for caramel cake!

But wait, the recipe is from The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook, a new, and yet (but soon) to be published collection of Southern recipes that is also edited by John T. Edge. I ran down stairs to check my edition of A Gracious Plenty to make sure the recipes weren't identical, and they weren't (yay!), so it was onward with the recipe for caramel cake in Food and Wine.

Outstanding! Fabulous! Delicious! Perfect! Just as I remembered! Caramel Cake
Adapted from Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook

The icing is fabulous, but I did run into a small problem with it. I waited the recommended 15 minutes before mixing the icing, and mixed the icing for the recommended 15 minutes before pouring it over the cake, but it was still too warm, so spent the next hour scraping puddles of soft caramel off the plate and back up the sides of the cake until the icing had finally cooled enough to stay up. The lesson here is that you might want to wait a bit longer before pouring the icing over the cake.

Cake
1 cup whole milk
4 egg whites, room temperature
2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons, softened
3/4 cup heavy cream

Icing
3 cups sugar
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup heavy cream

• Butter 3 8-inch cake pans (I used 2 10-inch cake pans), line bottoms with parchment paper. Butter the parchment paper and flour the pans, removing excess flour.
• Cake: In a bowl, mix 1/4 cup milk, egg whites, and vanilla.
• In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add butter and the remaining 3/4 cup of milk. Mix until smooth. Add the egg white mixture in 3 batches.
• In another bowl, beat the heavy cream with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Stir 1/3 of the whipped cream into the batter, then fold in the rest.
  
• Divide batter between the pans, smoothing the tops.
• Bake in a 350 degree, pre-heated oven for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
  
• Let cakes cool 10 minutes on a baking rack, then remove from pan, remove parchment paper, and let cool completely.
• Icing: In a saucepan, stir 2 1/2 cups of the sugar with the corn syrup and milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Keep warm.
• In a large, deep saucepan (size is important because caramel bubbles up and it extremely hot) sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup sugar. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until an amber caramel forms.
  
• With care, poor the warm milk mixture over the caramel. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring until the caramel dissolves, then stop stirring. Without stirring, let the caramel cook until the caramel reaches 235 degrees on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat.
• Into the caramel mixture, stir in the butter, vanilla, and 1/4 cup of the heavy cream.
  
• Pour caramel into a bowl and let cool for 15 minutes, then beat in the remaining 1/4 cup heavy cream with an electric mixer until creamy, about 15 minutes.
• Cake Assembly: Set one layer on a plate. Pour enough icing over top to cover the top of the layer. Top with a second layer and cover the top with icing. Add the third layer of the cake and pour the remaining icing over the top of the cake, letting it run down the sides. Using a spatula or knife, spread the icing evenly around the cake.
• Let cake stand for 2 hours to set the icing before serving.