I am still a bit new to this world of caking, and to have been commissioned to do a cake for a corporate function was really humbling. I was so excited when the order was for the Caramel Craziness cake – one of my own cake designs!
This is a 6 layer caramel mudcake with white chocolate ganache, topped with a homemade caramel sauce, yummo! The cake was decorated with homemade custom macarons (some with caramel ganache, some with white chocolate ganache), toffee shards and caramel popcorn.
As you can see, some of the shards have been shaped as stars. This was done using metal star cookie cutters. All I did was coat the inside edges with Crisco so that the toffee didn’t stick, placed them onto a tray lined with baking paper and poured the toffee into them and let them set. When they’re done, I just slightly bent the cutter outwards so the toffee comes away from it, and pushed the toffee star out. It’s actually a really simple process now I’ve nutted it out! 🙂
What you don’t see is the internal structure for this cake. I have added a cake board and dowels at the 3-layer mark, before adding on the top 3 layers. There is also a thick bamboo skewers running through the centre as a dowel to ensure that when I went to deliver it, there was less chance of the cake shifting. (I am getting into the habit of adding centre dowels into cakes where they are taller than a single tier – peace of mind!).
I love how this caramel drip has turned out. The best bit is, the caramel didn’t need to be too warm as I applied it – just a 10-15 second in the microwave (from the fridge) to liquify it a little bit was enough. The lesson I learnt about caramel a while ago was to only drip the tiniest, teeniest amount from the top because it doesn’t set like ganache does as it drips. I’ve read that you can add a little bit of white chocolate to the caramel to get it to set like typical ganache does. But from my previous experience of doing this (albeit with Top n Fill Caramel) was not favourable – it ended up changing the flavour a little too much for my liking. I’d prefer to let the caramel drip to the board and enjoy the pure caramel experience! 😉