November Daring Bakers

I'm still completely bummed that I missed last month's pizza challenge. Its just a tad difficult to bake when your oven is in the living room, next to the dishwasher and refrigerator. sigh...

BUT I do have a shiny, new, awesome tile floor so I suppose I'll survive.

This month's challenge is all about the sugar again. Literally. Brought to us by Dolres of Culinary Curiosity, Alex (Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo), and Jenny of Foray into Food.

Caramel Cake from Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater

I was completely intimidated at first reading the problems some people were facing with this recipe - greasy, oil messes, dense, flat cakes. I was pleasantly surprised that I really didn't have any issues at all.

I've made caramels before so I'm familiar with the "carameling" process (is that even a word). I think my biggest issue was that I had no clue how to "brown" butter for the frosting. (*ducks head*). I figured I'd just cook the heck out of it until it browned and whadday-know, that's how you do it ;).

I'm afraid that I overcooked my cupcakes though. I figured 15 minutes would be a good "look and see point" and when I peeked, they were golden...sigh.



My cake is dense, but not horribly so. It reminds me almost a bit more of a cross between a coffee cake and a pound cake, but neither are good examples.

The icing is ridiculously sweet though. I ended up added sea salt to it, to get that nice occasional salt crunch.

All in all this was a pretty easy challenge and I'm happy I gave it a try.