Caramel Apple Birthday Cake

Why hello you gorgeous people!

So it would seem that all my assessments are over... for now. AND it would also seem that the weather is grey, wet and horrible, perfect for staying indoors. AND it would ALSO seem that it was my dad's birthday yesterday... so what can I say?

The stars aligned. I just had to bake a great big birthday cake.

This cake is a bit of an homage to the transition of the seasons (it was kind of autumn a couple of weeks ago, but now, it's, kind of winter.) I thought the flavour combination, and the rich earthy tones of the icing and caramel would...

Ah I'm just kidding, I just made this cake because my dad really likes apple cake! And I kind of like caramel. So I googled 'caramel apple cake', and there it was, from "baked" (I really like these guys, it's a shame I didn't know about them when I was in New York last year!)

I tweaked the recipe for the icing (I just used Heather from Sprinkle Bakes' salted caramel icing, and also the hard caramel decorations - from her new cookbook, which is amazing!)

This cake looks really impressive, but really, it's not that difficult. And the apple cake is so soft and light, and SO APPLE-Y!

You can also decorate the cake however you want, I had never made hard caramel before, so I just kind of improvised drizzling the stuff all over some baking paper, and stuck it all over the cake however I pleased! You don't even have to make the caramel or the icing if you don't want to, I think the apple cake would be really nice just made as a loaf cake.

But as a whole, the cake and icing and hard caramel are sooooo good. Did I mention it was good?

Folks, you will need to crumb coat this one. See above.

I just love the hard caramel on top of the cake. The organic shapes look really impressive, and they taste good too! Just like the toffees you used to get from the canteen and school fetes when you were young. I made some little caramel droplets too, which I decorated the base with.

Dad had a really good birthday. I love you Papa C!

Caramel Apple Birthday Cake

Makes a big birthday cake, serves 20

Ingredients:

For the apple sauce:

6 red apples, peeled, cored and chopped.

1 cup apple juice

3 tbsp butter

2 tbsp honey

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

For the apple cake:

4 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 tsp cinnamon

180g (1 1/2 cups) unsalted butter, softened

2 1/2 cups caster sugar

2 large eggs

4 cups home-made apple sauce

For the salted caramel buttercream:

3/4 cup caster sugar

6 tbsp water

3/4 cup lite thickened cream

3 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups unsalted butter

1 tsp salt

3 cups icing (confectioner's) sugar

For the hard caramel:

1 cup caster sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

Method:

Apple Sauce:

In a medium saucepan, combine all ingredients, and stir to combine. Cook voer medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, until apples are soft. Allow to cool, then mash with a fork or potato masher until all solids are removed. Cool till room temperature.

Apple Cake:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line 3 round cake tins of the same size with baking paper.

In a large mixing bowl, sift flour, soda, powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy and combined.

Add eggs, and mix until combined.

Add the sugar mixture to the flour mixture, alternating additions with the apple sauce. Stir until combined, making sure no pockets of flour are left unnoticed!

Divide the batter between cake tins. Smooth tops, and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Transfer cakes to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

Salted Caramel Buttercream:

In a saucepan, stir together sugar and water, bringing to the boil over a medium-high heat. Cook without stirring until the sugar has liquified and has turned a deep amber colour. Be careful of burning it though! You must watch carefully!

Remove from the heat and add in cream and vanilla, stirring to comnbine. Allow to cool until barely warm, yet still pourable.

With an electric mixer, beat sugar, salt and butter until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and add icing sugar. Add the caramel, and beat again until misture is light and airy (about 4 minutes). Frosting is now ready to use.

Hard Caramel decorations:

Fill your kitchen sink halfway with icy cold water. Line baking trays with baking paper.

Put sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan and heat over a medium-high heat. Cook without stirring, instead swirling the pan a little, until caramel is a nice amber colour. Remove from the heat and sit the saucepan in the iced water for about 3 seconds to stop further cooking. The pan will sizzle!

Working really quickly, use a spoon to gather caramel in the sauce and drizzle it over the baking paper, in whatever crazy shape you want. You could go for circles, waves or just "abstract" drizzles like I did. Leave to harden.

Assembly:

Place one of the cooled cake layers on a large plate and level off the top using a bread knife. Spread a little of the buttercream over the top so it fully and evenly covers the cake. Repeat with other layers, stacking one upon the other as you go. Put the last layer of cake bottom-side up, so it is nice and flat.

Crumb coat the cake: Using a spatula, spread a thin layer of buttercream over the whole cake. (See photo above). Place in fridge for 30 minutes until the cake is chilled (this will make it easier to ice later).

Once chilled, evenly spread the rest of the icing all over the cake. Now, with the hardened caramel, go crazy! Stick whatever shapes you have all over the cake. Have fun with it!

Congratulations! And also (if applicable), Happy Birthday!

Caramel Easter Egg Fudge Brownies

FBC IS BACK BABY!

(and by FBC, I mean the Fairy Bread Chronicles, the name of my temporarily abandoned blog which I have been neglecting painstakingly throughout the last month because of all my big scary HSC exam prep.)

But GUESS WHAT!

...what?

My exams are officially over as of yesterday, and since I have gone into an uncontrollable baking frenzy.

Exhibit A: These bad boys right here.

Yesterday I was like HOLY WOW it's like 5 days till Easter!

And because of my stupid important exams, I had (almost) completely forgotten, and could not bake any delicious and bunny/egg related treats for y'all.

Soooo yesterday I came out of my exam coma and said to myself, you know what Angela? Today, you're going to buy 4 packets of caramel easter eggs, and you're going to make an amazingly sugary baked treat.

And so... I did!

By the by, today I am including many photos, as I am attempting to make up for the lack of material during my absence. So consider this a MONSTER POST.

And what better treat to include in my  MONSTER POST than possibly the most chocolate-y and sugary treat I have ever created?!

I give you: Caramel Easter Egg Fudge Brownies.

I tweaked a glorious recipe for Rolo Brownies that I saw here on Cookies and Cups, a fabulous blog that is always jam-packed with baking inspiration!

But, seeing as it's Easter soon, I figured I'd use caramel eggs instead. 2 cups of them!

I had to chop up the poor little eggs. I was shocked at how ruthlessly I massacred them:

Their caramel blood leaking out everywhere... Not pretty.

I made too much batter too, so I put some of the mixture into little circus cupcake cases that I got for Christmas. They are so cute!

These brownies are not pretty. And they're not polite either. Do they care what you think? Not one bit.

Is it possible for something to be ugly, and yet incredibly beautiful at the same time?

In this case, yes.

The brownies are soft and gooey and the caramel sauce/eggs balance out the sheer sweetness of the chocolate.

I dare you to give them a go!

Caramel Easter Egg Fudge Brownies

{Recipe adapted from Cookies and Cups, Brownie + Caramel Sauce recipe adapted from 'Sweet Serendipity' Cookbook}

Makes 1 and a half 20x25cm tins (or you can put the mixture into cupcake cases!)

Ingredients:

Brownie Base:

250g unsalted butter

250g dark chocolate

2 cups caster sugar

5 large eggs

1 1/4 cups plain flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla essence

Caramel Sauce:

(You could use store-bought caramel sauce, but just in case...)

1 cup caster sugar

1 cup thickened cream

2 tsp unsalted butter

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups Mini Caramel Easter Eggs

Fudge:

400ml can sweetened condensed milk

250g milk chocolate

2 tsp vanilla essence

Optional: Rainbow sprinkles

Method:

For the Brownie base:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius, and grease/line a 20x25cm brownie pan.

Combine chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of boiling water on medium-high heat. Make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water!

Remove from heat and mix in caster sugar. Whisk in the eggs one at a time. Sift flour and salt into the bowl, mix until just combined. Add vanilla.

Scrape the batter into the pan(s)/cases. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Let cool completely before adding the caramel sauce.

For the caramel sauce:

Either use store-bought, or make from scratch:

Combine sugar and 1/2 cup water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Cook until sugar is dissolved and mixture has started to turn golden brown. Swirl the pan around to prevent the sugar on the edges of the pan burning.

When mixture is a dark amber colour, remove from heat and add the cream slowly (mixture will bubble up!) Allow mixture to settle and add the butter and salt. If lumps remain, cook slowly over low heat until smooth.

Pour caramel sauce over the cooled brownies, spread so a thin layer covers the top of the brownie.

Chop easter eggs and spread evenly over the top of the sauce. Make sure the eggs don't add too much height to the pan, keep them low.

Fudge: In a small heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat, melt together the condensed milk and chocolate. Once smooth, remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.

Using a spatula, evenly spread the fudge over the top of the easter eggs, ensuring it doesn't spill over the side of the pan. (Optional: sprinkle rainbow sprinkles on top for some Easter-y magic!)

Let set for at least 2 hours before consuming (if you can wait that long!). Cut into squares.



Happy Almost-Easter everybody! May your day be peaceful and filled with chocolate eggs!

Salted Butter Caramel Icecream

Bonjour internet!

So I am into making icecream at the moment. A couple of months ago I made a pretty impressive icecream cake for my Mum's birthday - perhaps I'll put the recipe and semi-demi-ok iPhone photos up later - but I am really becoming a homemade chilled-treat enthusiast. So expect some more icecream posts!

Yesterday I made a "sophisticated" caramel icecream. It's not like a store-bought caramel icecream, which is uber sugary and (I think) a teensy bit sickly; it's got a dark, salty-sweet flavour that is very grown-up. it's an acquired taste, I admit, but once you get into it, it's so amazing!

You could serve this with grated dark chocolate sprinkled on top, or with strawberries and chocolate 'cigarello' biscuits like me!

Anyhoo, here's the recipe, adapted from the icecream master blogger/author himself, David Lebovitz. (Also, last post I forgot to mention that the delectable flourless choc/hazelnut cake was adapted from 'Bills Holiday', by Bill Granger).

Salted Butter Caramel Icecream

Ingredients:

2 cups full cream milk

1½ cups caster sugar

4 tablespoons salted butter

½ teaspoon good-quality sea salt

1 cup thickened cream

5 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:

Keep your 2 cups of milk cold (ie. in the fridge) until ready to use.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, spread the caster sugar out in an even layer. When the edges start to melt, stir them back into the middle of the pan using a wooden spoon. Repeat this process until all the sugar has melted.

Continue to cook until you can smell that it's almost going to burn - be careful as it will happen very quickly! If you chicken out at this bit, you're icecream will just taste sugary, instead of getting that deep caramel that is so highly desirable! So be brave, I believe in you!

Now quickly remove from the heat and stir in the butter and salt. Once the butter has melted, whisk in the cream. (Note: if the caramel hardens, simply return it to low heat and re-melt.)

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks, and pour a little bit of the caramel over them. Keep stirring!

Pour the yolky-caramelly mixture back into the original saucepan with the other caramel and stir over low heat (remember to scrape the bottom) until the mixture thickens.

Take the milk out of the fridge and transfer to a large bowl. Through a mesh sieve, pour the caramel mixture over the milk. Add the vanilla and stir until cool. Refrigerate for 8 hours.

Ding dong! 8 hours is up and it is time to press on!

If you have an iceream maker, freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

If you don't have an icecream maker, pour liquid into an airtight container and pop it in your freezer, taking it out every hour and mixing with electric beaters until it's too hard to do so! (Note: your icecream won't have quite the same texture as if churned in an icecream maker, so before eating, maybe leave it out for 10 minutes to soften a little).

This is such a sophisticated icecream! Well done old chap.