Tag Archives: Salted Caramel Buttercream

Brown Butter Salted Caramel Crunch Cake 2.0

I first baked and posted about this cake in 2016, for my own birthday. It was probably one of the most delicious things I have ever baked. However, my photos from that post (see below) do not do it justice.

The lighting is awful, the white balance is off and the angle I shot the cake at is just wrong. It does nothing to showcase the majestic height of this beauty. I have learned a thing or two about lighting and composition since then. It’s always a very satisfying thing to look back and see your own progress, no matter what you have chosen as your life’s work.

This cake was inspired by Bobbette and Belle’s Salted Caramel Toffee Cake.

This was my starting point, but I made a few changes. I browned the butter for the cake. Brown butter adds a layer of toasty, nutty deliciousness. Making it couldn’t be simpler. Butter is composed of butterfat, milk protein and water. When you brown butter, you are essentially toasting the milk protein. As you heat the butter, and it begins to bubble and sputter away, the water evaporates and the hot butterfat begins to cook the milk solids, turning them from creamy yellow to a splendid speckled brown colour and your whole kitchen smells like toasted hazelnuts. It’s insanely gorgeous!

In addition to the salted caramel buttercream between each layer, I decided to slip in an extra layer of almond meringue. The textural difference of pillowy soft cake layers is fantastic with the chewy crunchy meringue.

The cake is topped with a crown of English toffee. I made my own, because I could not find any in Ottawa this week. Laura Secord used to make an excellent version, but they are closed now. Purdy’s Chocolates normally carries it, but they were out of stock. If you live near a Trader Joes, they make an excellent English Toffee.

I made the cake again this weekend for my daughter’s 29th birthday. One of the pitfalls of having a mother who is a food blogger, is that your birthday cake is usually presented with a few slices removed and looking a bit rough around the edges from being photographed for a few hours. I always felt slightly guilty about this, so this year I made 2 smaller 6 inch cakes. One for me, to slice and shoot and the other just for the birthday celebration. Everyone loved this idea. More cake for all and no mom yelling, “don’t touch the cake yet. I need just a few more shots.”

This cake is a labour of love. Split the work over a few days and enjoy the journey. It’s worth it.

Click here to print recipe for Brown-Butter-Salted-Caramel-Crunch-Cake Download

Click here to print recipe for English-Toffee Download

Caramel Honeycomb Birthday Cake

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Regular readers of this blog know that I bake my own birthday cake every year. My girlfriend Paula learned this the hard way. I am still apologizing to her for my rudeness!

My birthday cakes are usually multi-recipe, all day baking extravaganzas. It’s my birthday present to myself. I get exactly what I want and I get to spend time alone, baking in my kitchen, my happy placeThis year’s cake was inspired by a trip to Charleston South Carolina we took with our friends The Grizzlies. One of the highlights of our weekend was a cooking class with Chef Vinson Petrillo at The Zero George Hotel, a charming 16 room boutique hotel. Chef Vinson is a recent transplant to the Charleston area. Originally from New Jersey, he honed his craft in New York. When I asked him what brought him to Charleston, he replied simply, “My wife wanted kids.” They are now the proud and very busy parents of two little ones, aged 1 and 2. As I observed Chef Vincent during our 3-hour class it became obvious to me that he must be an excellent dad. He handled all our questions and comments with great patience and equanimity!

For the first course, he cooked butternut squash by the sous vide technique. He followed that up by sauteeing it in brown butter and finally topped it with torched marshmallow. Sort of a glorified sweet potato casserole but so much better.

For the main course, he prepared sauteed snapper. Watching him cook and plate the food was just a joy. His passion for and knowledge of the ingredients were obvious.

The dessert course was a Chocolate Cremeux, essentially a chocolate pudding, topped with big shards of honeycomb. My iPhone photo does not do it justice.If you’ve ever had a Crunchie chocolate bar or sponge toffee, you know what Honeycomb is. Essentially, you make caramel and add baking soda at the end to produce a bubbly toffee confection. This honeycomb topping was the inspiration for my birthday cake.Before he began cooking, Chef Vinson emphasized the importance of “mise en place”. Read through the recipe, measure and chop all your ingredients and set out all pans and tools you need before you start cooking. Nowhere is this more important than in the preparation of honeycomb.

You will need a candy thermometer and a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silpat sheet. The process goes quickly, so don’t walk away from the stove. Chef Patrillo left his honeycomb unadorned, but I dipped the corners of mine in bittersweet chocolate and sprinkled them with a bit of flaky sea salt because that’s the way we roll around here!

For the cake, I turned to Brian Hart Hoffman’s book “Bake From Scratch.” I thought his classic golden cake with buttermilk would be a perfect base for honeycomb.I filled and covered the cake with a salted caramel buttercream.With a cup of tea or a glass of milk, this indulgent cake is the perfect way to celebrate a birthday.

Click here to print the recipe for Caramel Honeycomb Birthday Cake

Brown Butter Salted Caramel Crunch Cake

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Last week was my birthday and I made my own cake. Some people think that having to bake your own birthday cake is quite sad, but I’m not one of them. When you bake your own cake, you get exactly what you want. I gave quite a bit of thought about what to bake. (Way more thought than is probably healthy, I’ll admit).

As an early birthday present to myself I ordered Bobbette and Belle’s new cookbook. I read through it and stuck post it notes on over half half the pages. The photography is gorgeous and there are so many recipes that inspired me. It is a very well written book with lots of tips and techniques. While some of the recipes are not for rookie bakers, the instructions they give are very thorough.
As soon as I saw their Salted Caramel Toffee Cake, I knew I found my intended. Three layers of classic vanilla cake filled with homemade salted caramel buttercream, toffee pieces and a caramel drizzle.

This was my starting point, but I made a few changes. here’s how my cake came together.

I started with their recipe for a classic vanilla cake but I browned the butter first. Brown butter adds a layer of toasty, nutty deliciousness. Making it couldn’t be simpler. Butter is composed of butterfat, milk protein and water. When you brown butter, you are essentially toasting the milk protein. As you heat the butter, and it begins to bubble and sputter away, the water evaporates and the hot butterfat begins to cook the milk solids, turning them from creamy yellow to a splendid speckled brown colour and your whole kitchen smells like toasted hazelnuts. It’s insanely gorgeous!

It is best to brown the butter in a light coloured pot, so that you can easily monitor the browning process. Note that only the milk solids will turn brown. the butterfat stays clear. As soon as you reach the perfect brown colour, pour the butter out of the hot pot to let it cool completely.You will need to chill the brown butter and let it harden before you can cream it with the sugar.Divide the batter evenly into 3 pans and bake.Next I decided to alternate layers of brown butter vanilla cake with layers of almond meringue. I thought the textural difference of pillowy soft cake layers would be fantastic with chewy crunchy meringue. A salted caramel buttercream would be the perfect glue to hold all these layers together.Admittedly, there are a lot of components to prepare for this cake. Don’t try to do it all in one day. Make the components on day one and assemble on day 2. I have included detailed instructions on how to make all the parts, in the recipe below.