Chocolate and Salted Caramel Cake

This is a cake idea that I came up with for a friend’s 21^st Birthday. I wanted to come up with something that looked quite sophisticated, tasted great and was easy to make (no mean feat!)

Eventually, I came up with a chocolate and salted caramel cake, decorated with fresh strawberries and marbled chocolate shards.

The richness of the chocolate is complemented perfectly by the salt of the caramel and sweetness of the strawberries. The thin chocolate shards also provide a different texture to the cake.

With simplicity in mind, I have taken a few shortcuts with this recipe, such as using ready-made chocolate fudge icing and not making my own caramel. If you wanted to (and had time), you could do these yourself, but I think it tastes just a good with a little bit of cheating! 

 

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Chocolate and Salted Caramel Cake

You will need:

For the cake:

• 175g margarine
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 150g self-raising flour, sifted
• 50g of cocoa, sifted
• 1tsp baking powder
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt

For the filling:

• Salted caramel (I used Asda Extra Special Salted Caramel Sauce)
• Betty Crocker chocolate fudge icing

For the decoration:

• 500g strawberries
• 150g milk chocolate
• 150g white chocolate

 Instructions:

For the chocolate shards:

1. Cover a baking tray in cling film.
2. Melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water (bain marie method).
   
3. Pour the white chocolate across the baking tray.
4. Next, melt the milk chocolate in the same way.
5. Pour the milk chocolate directly over the white chocolate.
6. Taking a teaspoon, make swirling patterns through the two layers of chocolate to get a “marbled” effect.
7. Leave the chocolate to set completely in the fridge, before breaking into large shards.

For the cake:

1. Heat the oven to 180°C. Grease 2x18cm round tins with a little margarine.
2. Put all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon or a hand-held mixer for 1 minute, or until just combined.
3. Spoon the mixture into the tins and bake for 45-50 minutes. A skewer to the centre of the cakes should be pulled out clean.
4. Leave the cakes until completely cool before decorating.

For the filling and decoration:

1. Spread one of the 2 cakes with the chocolate fudge icing, then cover this with a layer of the salted caramel sauce.
2. Spread the rest of the chocolate fudge icing around the sides and across the top of the cake 
3. Taking the chocolate pieces made earlier, press onto the icing around the sides of the cake, slightly overlapping the pieces as you go – (It looks best if they are at different heights to make a more messy outline). Keep a few of the smaller shards or excess pieces to decorate the top afterwards.
4. Next, take the strawberries and remove the leaves. Slice each through the middle.
5. Place the strawberries all over the surface of the cake stalk side down at varying angles.
6. Taking the remaining chocolate, break these into small shards, which can then be stuck into the icing in and around the strawberries.
7. Finally, drizzle a small amount of the remaining salted caramel over the strawberries as a finishing touch!

The cake is now complete. It’s best to eat it as soon as possible (as if you could resist to eat it later), as the strawberry juice can tend to make the cake a little soggy after a while. 

If preparing in advance, leave the strawberries off until the last minute, and keep back a little of the chocolate fudge icing to stick each one individually before serving.

If you wanted to simplify the recipe even further, you could use Betty Crocker’s Devil’s Food Cake mix instead of making your own chocolate sponge.

Hope you enjoy!

Love, Chloe xx 

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