Salty Chocolate Caramel Cake

Back at the end of November a friend defended her PhD Thesis (whoohoo!) and I hosted a pot-luck celebration for her. I had been itching to make a cake for a while and I thought this would be a perfect excuse to try my hand in a layered cake. After inquiring what type of cake she would like I decided I was going to do a twist on a chocolate cake by adding caramel and salt to the mix! Now I thought that most of the world knew about the salted chocolate and salt caramel craze but to my surprise there were numerous people who thought the combo was a little weird until they tasted their first bite. Then it was love and rave reviews the rest of the night. While I would love to come up with my recipes I just don't have the time, so I troll the internet and browse through the few cook books I have for inspiration and direction. I found a recipe from Martha Stewart's website for a Salted-Caramel Six Layer Chocolate Cake and it sounded so tantalizing I just had to try it!

Salted Chocolate Caramel Cake from Martha Stewart

I won't recopy the recipe here, but you can click the link above to find it. I made a few changes that I will include. Now I must confess I did not really have the time to make my own caramel. I am typically "a from scratch" kind of girl, primarily because the effort rewards itself the taste and the quality. It also allows you to tweak things that you just can't in the same way when using mixes or prepared items. So I bought a jar of caramel topping, I believe it was Smuckers but my memory is a little fuzzy. The cake I made was also only three layers. I had slightly larger cake pans so the baked layers were not really thick enough to slice in half and keep their structural integrity. I did however for the first time trim the layers so that they were flat and let me tell you it makes constructing a layered cake so much easier! There is also not the fear that one of the layers will slide off. I did leave the top layer rounded to make the top of the cake seem higher. Then the last little tweak was because I had coarse kosher salt on hand I just used that instead of flaked sea-salt.

It is a little surprising with the number of people and the rave reviews that the cake didn't disappear that night. However with most fine desserts a little does go a long way. The cake kept relatively well for a couple days, the caramel definitely helped the cake stay moist. The salt did melt after the first day so the rock salt turned into little salt condensation pools, which gave the same salty effect to the chocolate. I definitely am keeping this recipe for the future. I also recommend eating the cake with a good strong cup of coffee!

Happy Baking and Savoring!