Caramel Cake

My Mom used to make this cake all of the time! To me, it was her specialty. Well, everything she made was her speciality! Any who, I LOVED when I could smell the caramel cooking on the stove top and could hardly wait for the cake to cool so we could cut it. It seemed to take FOREVER … kinda like waiting for a pot of water to boil. This is a simple recipe with ingredients that are probably in your pantry and refrigerator right now. And, it is delicious! Yumola, even! Of course my Mom didn’t follow a recipe, so this one took some collaborating with her to get the measurements just right. She made her caramel the old fashioned way, too, with butter, evaporated milk and sugar and stood over the stove for an hour while it cooked perfectly. Uhhhhmm, so about that. Yah, I came up with a GREAT alternative. For real. Mom put her stamp of approval on it! So….. 😊

You will need:

3 cups of sifted cake flour

2 teaspoon of baking powder

1/2 t salt

2 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 1/2 cups of sugar

6 eggs, at room temperature

1 cup of sour cream, at room temperature (or you could use 1 cup of milk)

1 T of vanilla extract (yes tablespoon)

Icing

2 sticks of unsalted butter

2 cups of dark brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup of milk

4 cups of sifted confectioner’s sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Butter three 9″ round cake pans and line the bottoms with waxed paper. Butter the paper, as well, and flour the insides of the pans.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth, fluffy and light. Add the eggs, one at a time, until smooth. Add in the vanilla extract and mix. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl.  With the mixer on low, alternate adding the flour and sour cream into the egg mixture ending with the flour. Do not over mix. Divide the batter between the three prepared pans.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire racks for 10 minutes and then remove from the pans and cool completely on the wire racks.

For the icing, melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add the brown sugar and milk and bring to a boil, stirring constantly, to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and cool slightly. Beat the confectioner’s sugar into the milk mixture until smooth. Place the bottom cake layer on a cake plate and spread 1/3 of the icing onto it. Place the second layer on top of the bottom layer and spread another 1/3 of the icing onto it. Place the remaining layer on top and spread the remaining icing on the top and sides.

#yumola