Blessings From My Kitchen: September 2020

For those of you who sense a lack of design and artistry skills, particularly in the baking department, this might be a project to consider. mentioning not, the terribly good fluff of crumb the above structure beholds.

In actuality today's guide is about fashioning caramel cake, together with two frostings, that make it worth writing love letters into the ethos to. The grandmaster exterior housing is justly furnished with an interior of plush cloud.

Furthermore, we can agree it's the inside that matters, a reasoning that extends to innumerable life principles/people/places/ things and the like.

In my unrelenting opinion a baked good is way better when caramel infiltra tes it in multiple ways. Burnt sugar condiments are a stupendous way to create dessert magic.

If anything, please don't see it as an exhaustive task. I suppose it would seem so, once you glance at the product list of things to gather, whip, bake and assemble. Fear not, they're nothing more than pantry staples; collab-ing to produce stupendous results.

Alternatively, this could b a minimalist baker's paradise, in that it's excellent in naked form. Though, I would goad you to go the whole nine: cake, frosting et all, in finale releasing your fiercest pastry van Gogh.

Baking and assembling chess cake was unforgettable, in my experience. We were in the throes of Covid and I had too many things on my plate(literally :)). Default survival mode was directly in line with the impact of leftover prospects and cake shaving quantities.

For the caramel~
Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
2 tbsp butter
1 can condensed milk

Directions:

Place sugar in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Using a spoon or spatula, gently whisk the sugar.
Allow the sugar mixture to come to a brown and turn a dark amber in color( Coca-cola color is how I like to describe the end result)
Take off heat and stir in butter.
Mix in condensed milk. Stir until combined.
Return to stovetop and cook on medium for a further two minutes.

For the cake~

Ingredients:

(cake recipe adapted from Liv for Cake)

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

2 ¼ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp salt

¾ cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla

½ cup caramel

1 cup milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F
Grease and flour 2 9" inch cake pans. I used 2 12"'x12" pans for the cake here and doubled the recipe.
In a large bowl, sift together, flour, baking powder and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add eggs and beat on high until creamed and well combined.
Beat in the vanilla and caramel until incorporated.
Add flour and milk in three additions, beginning and ending with milk. Scrape bowl with spatula as and when needed.
Divide batter evenly among prepared pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes, ur until toothpick inserted in the center of cake comes out clean.
Leave cakes in pans for 10 minutes. Invert onto wire racks to cool completely.

Vanilla caramel frosting:
I added two tablespoons of caramel to my vanilla buttercream and added 1-2 teaspoons of cream.

Chocolate caramel frosting:
I added three tablespoons of caramel to my chocolate buttercream and reduced the amount of cream to 1 tbsp.

Notes:

Caramel thickens as it cools. Store in the fridge for up to two weeks. Heat in the microwave before each use.

The top portion of the game board was made of white chocolate/black candy melts. However, I spent so much time on molds and fondant/gumpaste, that I could not leave those pieces out.

Chess molds can be found on Amazon. The pandemic situation caused delay in shipments, and I was forced to make gelatin molds. By the time, I engineered king to pawn, my Prime parcel arrived a day prior to cake delivery.