19. Chocolate And Caramel Layer Cake

This recipe came from the ever inspiring BBC Good Food; initially, i spotted it in one of the magazines (possibly the easter edition?) but it is on the website too. It was always going to be a good cake (after all, where can you go wrong with a wealth of chocolate and sugar?!) but it really did surpass expectations. Not only was it relatively simple, despite possible appearances, it tasted absolutely delicious and the sponge was fantastically light and moist.


The way in which the sponges were made in batches of two, grouping together the vanilla and chocolate mixes and the chocolate and chocolate caramel mixes, made the whole process quite simple and straight forward, as i mentioned earlier. Also, I think it was the use of natural yoghurt that made them so soft and light; definitely something i'll have to try in my other more traditional sponges as a tweak.


I followed the recipe word for word up until it came to sandwiching together the layers...i just couldn't bear to use a shop bought tin of caramel! Instead, i opted for a basic butter cream icing, two thirds of which i left as plain vanilla and the final third which i flavoured with cocoa. I obviously haven't tried the cake with the caramel filling, but the butter creams did work very well and carried the extra joy of having a little bit of elbow grease behind them!


I 'iced' the cake as per instruction with a simple chocolate ganache, which i had more success with than that from the cloud forest cake! Then, rather than leaving it plain as it was a special cake for someone leaving at work, i just topped it with some mini mini marshmallows, caramel cubes from Divine Deli, little crispy chocolate balls and some milk and white chocolate drizzled over.


All in all, considering how eye catching of a cake it is (especially if it were to be made by someone with a bit more refinement!) it really is quite simple. The main challenge is just co-ordinating kitchen space with the numerous bowls and tins it needs!



It has been a long time since i've posted (nearly a month, oops!) but things have, as ever (!), been quite hectic and my time in the kitchen has been drastically slashed. I've got a couple of things lined up to cook this week though, and hopefully i'll get back on track with the blogging!