Salted Caramel Soaked Chocolate Cake

It's probably not hard to tell, I love baking, especially with my friend Michelle. For girls' night a few weekends ago, she texted me a picture of this pin, asking if we should make it. Yeah, I am not really sure how I even could have said no to making this with her.

Photo Credit: Michelle Waters

If you didn't click the pin, I'll just tell you, it was a recipe from Martha Stewart. For whatever reason, Martha and I don't mesh well. I seem to find her recipes a little too elaborate and my attempt never turns out like her pictures, which actually is fine with me because I have loved what I end up creating.

Photo Credit: Michelle Waters

Since neither Michelle or I are opposed to devil's food cake mix, we didn't even attempt Martha's cake recipe and went the quicker route with a box mix. For the rest of the recipe, Michelle was in charge of the caramel part and I was responsible for the frosting. The only part of Martha's whole Salted Caramel 6 Layer Cake recipe (the original pin) we ended up making correctly - or so we think - was the frosting. And let me tell you, it is so insanely yummy. I will be using it for something else in the future, no doubt.


Darker Chocolate Frosting
Martha Stewart

1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp cocoa powder (Dutch-process recommended)
1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp water, warm
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
1/2 cup powdered sugar
generous pinch coarse salt
1 pound semisweet chocolate, chopped, melted and cooled

Whisk cocoa powder in water until dissolved. In a separate bowl, beat butter, powdered sugar and salt on medium until pale and fluffy. Slowly beat in melted chocolate and cocoa mixture until combined. This next part is important. Let stand for 30 minutes before using. It will not look very frosting like at this point and you must be patient to let it set. However, do not stick it in the refrigerator because it will solidify into the state of your original chocolate.

I learned this by putting leftover frosting in the fridge. Nope. Don't do it if you want to eat some more later. You do that too, right? Eat frosting plain, by itself? Whew. I knew we could be friends.

Photo Credit: Michelle Waters

At this point, Michelle was making the caramel and well, it didn't exactly get as thick as it looked in the picture and we figured it should have been by the time that had passed. Probably something to do with the temperature and needing a candy thermometer and whatnot. Just a little beyond us at midnight on girls' night, trying to assemble this cake, despite Michelle's awesome skills in caramel making. So here's what we did.

Yup, just poured our thinner caramel between each layer. Oh yeah. We also cut our layers down to 3 instead of 6. We ate some of the others because we were getting antsy to assemble and isn't that part of girls night? Eating layers of cake, prior to assembly? Well, it was for us.

The three cake layers pretty much became one and the frosting was just delightful to work with. It has really great consistency and spreads so easily. Plus, it looks so good just as is, in its rich, dark state.

Photo Credit: Michelle Waters

As I said, we were up past midnight making this and at one point I said, let's drizzle caramel on top and sprinkle a little salt. I said it, but definitely forgot to do it. So, just pretend the photos have a little caramel drizzle, sprinkled with sea salt.

Photo Credit: Michelle Waters

So, that is the story of how we arrived at the Salted Caramel Soaked Chocolate Cake. Very much like those "poke" cakes I've seen on pinterest, but I haven't tried making one of those. This however, I will make on purpose again. It is quite decadent. We even had it for breakfast the next morning because, well, that's how we roll.


This post is linked up to some of the parties listed under my Show & Tell tab at the top of the page.