The Year of the Caramel Cake

We are 3 weeks into the new year and all my orders so far have been for caramel flavoured cake. The smell of caramel is quite heavenly, it is too good not to share.

So here is my version of a Caramel cake

Ingredients
Sponge cake
4 large eggs, separated
3/4 cup white sugar
5ml caramel essence
280ml cake flour
125ml hot water
125ml oil (not olive oil)
2t baking powder

Syrup
150ml water
150g castor sugar
5ml vanilla essence

Method
Sponge cake
1. Pre-heat oven to 180ºC.
1. Beat egg yolks and sugar until light and creamy
2. Add caramel essence and beat again. scrape down sides and bottom of the bowl
3. Mix the boiled water and oil together.
4. Add water, oil and flour to eggs and sugar, beat well
5. Fold in the baking powder very gently.
6. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into the batter
7. Pour mix into 2 greased tins and place in the centre of oven
8. Bake for 25-30 min

Syrup
Place all the ingredients into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Simmer until all the sugar has dissolved. Set aside to cool.

Allow the cakes to cool for 10 min then using a pastry brush, brush them with the syrup. remove sponges from the tins and allow to completely cool on wire racks.

Butter-Cream Frosting
Whip up a batch of my butter-cream frosting. Add 2 table spoons of tinned caramel to the mixture and beat well.
Sandwich together the two cakes with 1/3 of the butter cream. With the remaining 2/3 butter-cream cover the sides and top of the cake.

To decorate, pip rossetts of caramel onto the cake.

Alternatively, sandwich the two cakes with a layer of caramel.