Daring Bakers: Caramel Cake

After a few months of savory challenges, Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity, Alex of Brownie and Blonde, Jenny of Foray into Food decided to get us back into the sweet life. They choose for our challenge this month, Shuna Fish Lydon’s Caramel Cake.

One thing I love about the Daring Bakers is that they challenge me to bake something such as a layer cake that I normally may not bake because its just me. I don't have a family close by that I can feed my baked goods. Its a challenge sometimes because I feel bad making something that for the most part will be wasted. Some of the recipes are harder to scale down and make cupcake or mini cakes.

But this time out challenge was a caramel cake that looked easy to scale down. Many bakers chose to do cupcakes but I decided to go the mini cake route. I found 4x1 1/4" round cake pans by Wilton at Target. Perfect! I could halve the recipe and get personal size cakes. Half of the recipe made 3 mini cakes. They puffed up a lot during baking but settled down a lot after they cooled. If you were to make a layer cake out of these, you would still have to even out the top a bit.

The cake itself was very tasty but the star of the it all was the caramelized butter frosting. It was slightly nutty, sweet, and oh so delicious! I probably could have eaten alone and been very happy. Some of the frosting was sacrificed in numerous taste tests. I made a quarter of a batch which was enough frosting for two of the mini cakes. The recipe says it keeps well in the fridge for a month so one of the frozen cakes may make an appearance soon.

Many of the other Daring Bakers said that they cake was too sweet so I cut bake on the sugar in mine. I used 1/2 cup for a half recipe. I think that helped because the cake was not overly sweet. I have a sweet tooth but it doesn't take much for it to become too much sugar for me.

This cake is perfect for the holidays. Its simple but delicious. It can be anything from a cupcake to a layer cake with no problem.

To see this months recipe, check out Shuna Fish Lydon's recipe here. She has a great blog with delicious recipes so please check it out! She also has a step by step guide on how to make the caramel cake as well.

Head over to the Daring Baker's Blogroll to see more delicious caramel cake! There was also an optional challenge to make Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert. I didn't have a chance to make them but several DBers did and they look fantastic!!