Chocolate Caramel Cake

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It was my turn to make a cake for coffee morning, so decided to make a chocolate one. It's an American recipe from a neighbour. The caramel isn't made from a tin of Carnation Caramel, which we use nowadays, but is made using golden syrup, and the cake isn't topped with the usual sickly American-style icing, but with a simple chocolate icing, and topped with some chopped walnuts.

For the cake you need:
1 large egg
120g unsalted utter, room temperature
200g  caster sugar
1 tspn baking powder
1 tspn bicarb soda
250ml full fat milk, room temperature
1 tbspn golden syrup
1 tbspn cocoa
1 tspn cinnamon
pinch salt
few walnuts, finely chopped 
Icing:
Icing sugar 
1 tspn butter, softened
1 tbspn cocoa
water
Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease and base line a 20cm round cake tin.
Cream butter and sugar together until mixture is pale and creamy, then beat in the egg. Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarb soda and salt together. Slowly add the milk and flour mix at the same time while beating constantly on low-medium speed.
Warm the golden syrup in the microwave for about 15 seconds so that it can be easily beaten into the batter. Pour 1/2 the mixture into a bowl and stir in the cinnamon and cocoa until well mixed. Pour the chocolate batter into the cake tin first, smooth the surface, then add the caramel layer. Smooth over the top with your spatula and bake for 45-55 minutes. Keep an eye on the cake in the first 10 minutes: if the edges have started to bake fast and the middle appears to sink, turn down the heat of your oven by around 10 degrees. Let the cake cool in the tin then turn onto a wire rack.
For the icing, beat all the ingredients together and spread over the top of the cake. Sprinkle the chopped walnuts over. (I didn't put the amount of icing sugar, as I didn't weigh it!)

The cake has a soft crumb; I liked the 2 layers- the chocolate one at the bottom then the different flavour of the caramel layer; the walnuts added another texture and crunch.

Comments

Suelle said…
This looks good - I like the way you can see how the batter has moved during baking to give the swirl of chocolate at the edges of the cake. It looks very impressive!
12/12/15 5:49 am
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