Cake With Caramel Frosting

Ingredients

Cake
  • 1 cup butter
  • 1/3 cup molasses
  • 1/3 cup golden corn syrup
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1¼ milk (I use whole milk, but 2% isn't the end of the world)
  • 3 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 4 tsp ground ginger
  • 3 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/8 tsp ground cloves
  • 1/8 tsp salt
Caramel Sauce
  • 1 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1¼ cups heavy cream
  • ¼ cup butter (half a stick)
  • 1 tsp salt
Buttercream
  • 15 tbsp butter, room temperature
  • 2 1/3 cups icing sugar
  • ½ cup caramel sauce

Instructions
Cake

Preheat your oven to 350ºF and grease two 8" round cake pans well. If you're worried about sticking, you can place a sheet of parchment paper on the bottom.

Put the butter, molasses, and corn syrup in a medium saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts. Turn off the heat and stir in the brown sugar.

In a small bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs very well. Slowly pour into the butter mixture, whisking quickly so the eggs don't start to cook.

Put the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and salt into a large bowl and whisk together. Add the butter mixture and stir until just combined.

Pour the batter evenly between the two prepared pans, and bake for 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs attached.

Set on a wire rack to cool completely, then cut off the domed tops and split the cakes in half to create four even layers.

Caramel Sauce

While the cake is cooling, make the caramel sauce.

Add the sugar to a medium saucepan set over medium heat. Watch very carefully. Swirl the pan as the sugar starts to melt so the solid sugar mixes into the liquid. I'm not against using a whisk during this part, even though all the pros tell you not to.

Once the sugar has completely melted and is an amber colour, turn off the heat. Add the butter, heavy cream, and salt, and whisk until completely combined. If it seems like it's hardening up again, put it back over a medium-low heat while you whisk.

Set aside to cool.

Buttercream

Add the butter to the bowl of your stand mixer with the paddle attachment and beat for 5 minutes, until light and fluffy.

Add the icing sugar, and beat for another two minutes until well combined. Add the caramel sauce and beat until evenly combined.

Assembly

Spread about ¼" of frosting on top of the first layer of cake. Using your offset spatula, make the frosting so that there is a slight lip of frosting around the outside edge (this is to keep the caramel sauce from running out.

Add 3 tbsp of the cooled caramel sauce on top of the frosting.

Repeat with the second and third layers of cake.



When you put the top layer of cake on, frost the entire cake, and then put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Put the remaining caramel sauce in the fridge as well. Once the cake has cooled, and the frosting hardened, pour the caramel sauce slowly over the top of the cake, letting it pool down the side a little bit. You probably won't need all of the sauce.