From Mary Berry’s Salted Caramel Cake
For years in this house, the default birthday cake was a really lovely chocolate passion fruit roulade. It’s so good that when we served it at a holiday meal to someone who said they didn’t want any because they didn’t like chocolate and fruit together it changed their mind about the combination of chocolate and passion fruit at the very least which, to me, is a step in the direction of a much more fulfilling life for them.
So finding a new birthday cake to top that one was a challenge. Why ruin a good thing? Last December we chanced it and went for a version of Mary Berry’s Salted Caramel Cake. I made a few changes and hey, presto, we have a new contender for the default birthday cake in this household. It has a ton of flavor that actually gets better the longer it sits, if you can keep your greedy little paws off it.
RE: the candles in the cake below. We try to use things up in this house before going out and buying new things so these are the leftover letters from some other birthday cake that correctly spelled out someone’s name. This year we celebrated HENGE (not their real name) with as much enthusiasm as one can celebrate an ancient stone circle.
Ingredients
For the cake
For the icing
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. While the oven is heating up, grease two sandwich tins and line them with baking paper. If you use a smaller tin, the layers will be thicker. If you use a larger one, they will be thinner. I used the 20cm tins originally suggested. Every time I have to line a tin I wonder if precut tin liners exist. They do. They are worth it.
Mix the ingredients in the order listed. I used a stand mixer because there were a few small ingredients that I find are faster to measure and add while the mixer is doing the work. La Berry uses an electric hand whisk. Up to you and the amount of patience you have for turning things on and off. In any case, mix until everything is well incorporated.
Pour half of the mix into each of the prepared tins and level the surface. Don’t bang them on the counter and try to get the air bubbles out. Just use a spoon to make sure it is pretty even and not all humped up in the middle. Put both tins in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, depending on your oven.
While the cakes are baking, take your mixing implement of choice and start with the butter and sugar. Beat until it is light and fluffy. It takes longer than you think. The original recipe called for some salt in the icing but I skipped that part because we’re more partial to the caramel part than the salt part of salted caramel but throw it in if you really like that saline life. You do have to add the rest of the tin of the caramel to the sugar and butter now though. Don’t spend too long mixing this part, just incorporate and you’re done.
Unless something has gone terribly wrong, or your neighbor came to the door asking for a donation you couldn’t refuse, you should have finished the icing before the cakes were finished. Take them out of the oven when they are done (coming away from the sides of the tin or check with a skewer if you’re really not sure) and turn out on a cooling rack. Now that I think about it, if you did get sidetracked by your neighbor that’s fine because the cakes have to cool anyway.
Once the cakes are cooled you are going to stack them and ice them. This part is always a bit of personal preference to me: do you like a big thick inner layer of icing and thin everywhere else? Do you want most of the icing on the top? So many choices. I will say, we went for a mid size layer of icing between the layers with half of the Ritter Sport chunks mixed in. Then iced the cake as normal and threw the rest of the chunks on top.
Generally I don’t write any sort of epilogue to these posts but it bears repeating that this cake GOT BETTER WITH AGE. The next day it was great and they day after at least as good as great. So if you’re the kind of person who is organized enough to bake something the day before it is needed and you can keep your family from eating it while it is unattended, you will be a hero.
