This week’s TWD was chosen by Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy: caramel peanut-topped brownie cake. There is a gorgeous photo to accompany this recipe and it has definitely caught my eye every time I flip through Dorie’s book. That said, I’ve never felt compelled to make it. I think that’s mainly because it involves making caramel, which to be quite honest, scared me. There are certain cooking/baking challenges I look forward to, but making caramel is not one of them.
Things just didn’t go well for me with this one. I decided to scale down the recipe and just make one smaller cake in my 4-inch springform pan. I wasn’t sure, however, how high to fill the pan with the batter. I thought I left plenty of room for the cake to rise but I definitely didn’t. By about 20-25 in, my cake had completely cooked over the top of the pan and started spilling over. Luckily, I took Dorie’s advice and baked the cake on a baking sheet so chocolate cake did not wind up all over my oven. I managed to salvage the cake when it finished baking and set out to make the caramel. And then I failed. It took longer than Dorie said it would for my caramel to turn amber. I wanted to make sure it was dark enough that it wouldn’t be bland but somewhere along the way I crossed the line from amber to burnt. The sauce looked fine but it definitely smelled and tasted a bit burnt.
Thanks Tammy for this pick and forcing me to step outside my comfort zone. Perhaps I’ll have better results next time! If you’re interested in the recipe for this cake, check out Tammy’s blog and as always, head over to TWD to see all of the wonderful treats that were made this week!!
Sad! It looks wonderful, but I do believe you with the springform size – I used a 4 1/2″, and there was barely enough room. Congrats on stepping out of your comfort zone though, maybe next time your caramel will cooperate?
Well, at least you tried! Caramel can be amazingly tricky.
Based on my calculations, to go from a 8″ (4″ radius) pan to to 4″ (2″ radius) pan, you should have quartered the recipe instead of only halving it. The area of a circle is (pi*[radius^2]); so an 8″ pan actually has four times the area (16pi) of a 4″ pan (4pi). I still think you did a great job salvaging it though, it looked fantastic!
Caramel is tricky and everyone has a different taste for what is burnt. My family likes sugar candy that is cooked to the point of burnt in my opinion. YOu just never know!
Oh Tracey, sorry it didn’t work out! I will tell ya thought, looking at your goreous pics, you would never know. I ducked out this week- chocolate overload!!
It looks pretty perfect to me!!!
Sorry your cake didn’t work out perfectly, but you can’t tell! These photos look straight out of the cookbook!
Congratulations for not shying away from the caramel. It may have been a little burned, but next time you will be better equipped to hit that perfect window of caramelized, but not burned. A little practice and you will be a pro. Caramel is one of my favorite things to make, but I burned more than a few batches starting out.
at least you gave the caramel a shot, and it looks beautiful! next time you will get the timing right! 🙂
My caramel didn’t work either! Sorry about yours. It looks delicious however.
Your cake looks gorgeous! Caramel is tricky – but practice makes perfect, so don’t be discouraged. A big part of success in baking is just building from prior failures! 🙂 But in all honesty, I’m thinking you can’t really call this little beauty a failure! (Pass the fork!)
Your cake looks delicious even though you had a couple of problems at first. I have to admit that I often use a recipe from the “Diana’s Desserts” site when our required recipe looks risky.
I hate it to have problems like that when baking, but it does happen occassionally. Hopefully next weeks recipe will be more cooperative!
Good job with your caramel!
Your cake looks wonderful! It was kind of out of my comfort zone too!
Cherie
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