Apple and Salted Caramel Cake

This week a very good friend asked if I could make a cake for them. I was absolutely delighted to do so and the requested cake was Apple and Salted Caramel

I had never actually made an apple and salted caramel cake before so I decided to do a little research. I found a delicious looking recipe on the Brown Eyed Baker and I must say that her cake looks amazing. However, naturally I had to make a couple of little adaptations and I am very happy with how it turned out. Firstly I wanted to make the cake lighter and more summer appropriate, so less spicy. I also wanted to include fresh apple to make it taste more fresh. Finally I came up with my own easy to make icing and some interactive decorations

Chocolate apple of mystery!!

Two delicious layers of apple cake were covered in frosting

before three little apples were placed on top

Excuse the on location picture quality

And the apples, well let me show you how they work.....

Fun right?!

Apple Salted Caramel Cake (adapted from BrownEyedBaker)

Apple Cake (enough for 2x9" Cake layers)

340g Butter
400g Caster Sugar
75g Brown Sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
500g Cake Flour (Plain flour with 8 tbsp replaced by cornflour)
1 tsp Baking powder
2 tsp Baking soda
1/2 tsp all spice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 eggs
4 cups grated apple in 2 lemons worth of lemon juice

Salted Caramel Icing (enough for this cake)

280g Salted Butter
560g Icing Sugar
60ml Caramel Sauce

Caramel Sauce recipe that I used

Instruction

1- Preheat oven  to 180'C and grease and line your cake tin

2 - Beat together the butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla extract

3 - Sieve together the flour, baking powder and soda and spices

4 - Beat the eggs together

5 - Add portions of the eggs and flour to the butter alternating between the two, leaving a portion of flour

6 - Add the grated apple and the remaining flour.

7 - Divide between 2 9" cake tins. Wrap the tins in tin foil to protect and bake for 45-50minutes.

8 - Allow the cake to cool in the tin.

*Note - This is a very soft and light cake and needs to cool completely in the tin to be workable but the texture upon eating is just perfect!!*

9 - Beat together the butter icing sugar and caramel sauce for the frosting.

10- Ice the cake - First do a crumb coat - there will be crumbs. Although I think a naked cake version would also be awesome

Finish the icing and make the chocolate apples.

To make these I used half circl moulds and dark chocolate. I found the bet technique was to paint the chocolate onto the mould to achieve even layers. Then set and melt the edge to get two half circles together

I made a hole in the top and filled with more caramel sauce. Then filled in the hole with a pretzel stick.

Then when the cake is ready to be eaten, just cut the apples and enjoy the show!!

So that's it! I hope you enjoy and try it out for yourself!

Birthday cakes

Another week, another cake, or so it seems! But let me tell you.....I am not complaining!! Baking is so much fun, but nothing is more fun than sharing that baking with others!! Recently I have been very lucky and happy to have had a number of opportunities to make celebration cakes for birthday parties.

The first was a beautiful two tiered birthday cake for my grandmother. We celebrated her birthday with the rest of my family and we had a wonderful time. The cake went down really well and I was pleased with how it turned out. The technique that I have been using most recently has been piped buttercream roses. I love this piping technique because it gies height and definition easily and with a little more time and planning you can add a beautiful focus to any cake.

Inside the cake was a store bought cake that originally started by looking quite cheap. There were positives and negatives to this. As you can see, a small amount of work changed the cake into something more impressive, without having to do the baking. However, as it turned out, the store bought cake was dry and unimpressive. I feared this when I saw it but was assured by multiple people that the cake had a 4 star review from a leading local paper. Just shows that you should always trust your instinct on these things. Regardless everyone at the party enjoyed the cake and no-one appeared to complain about the dryness, so....

The second cake was one that I did for a friends' 30th. She specifically requested a red velvet and recently commented that she would love to be able to have a sprinkles cake. So I combined the two and came out with this.

As you can see once again I have used the piped roses, but this time as a much smaller accessory, making the sprinkles the highlight of the cake.

As you may have read last week I explored the difference between artificial and natural red food colouring. This cake was for an American friend, so I knew it needed to be bright red and therefore used the artificial colouring. So how does it look cut -

Want a piece?!