Salted Caramel Cake

Step 1

Start by pre-heating your oven to 180c, also grease and line two 8 inch cake tins. Leave these aside.

Step 2

In a large bowl, add the softened butter, oil, brown sugar and vanilla extract. Beat these together for 5 minutes.

Step 3

Add 3 of the eggs into this, mix these in. Then add the remaining 3 eggs and mix these in too.

Step 4

Add the flour and milk, mix just until you get a smooth batter.

Step 5

Pour this into your cake tins and bake for around 45-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Step 6

Meanwhile in a pot, add the milk, brown sugar and vanilla. Place this onto medium heat and heat just until the mixture comes to a simmer. You can also do this in your microwave.

Step 7

Leave this aside until you're ready to use it.

Step 8

Once the cakes are baked and are still hot, pour the sweet milk over them. Now leave these to cool completely.

Step 9

In a pan or pot, add about 1/3 of the sugar. Place this onto medium heat.

Step 10

Heat this sugar, whiles constantly stirring, until the sugar starts to melts. Once it starts to melt, pour another 1/3 of the sugar into the pan. Keep stirring until this starts to melt, then add the rest of the sugar. Make sure not to increase the heat during this process, you want to melt the sugar slowly, otherwise it can burn.

Step 11

Keep heating and stirring until all of the sugar has melted, it should be an amber colour at this point.

Step 12

Take this off the heat and immediately add the softened butter. Mix this in.

Step 13

Slowly pour in the cream whiles still mixing, then mix in the salt.

Step 14

Place this onto low heat and let the caramel simmer for 1-2 minutes, just so that it can thicken slightly. Then sieve this and leave aside to cool COMPLETELY. We don't want it to be hot when using it.

Step 15

At this point, make the buttercream. Once it has been made, mix in some of the COOLED caramel. Add this caramel to taste.

Step 16

Once the cake layers have cooled, the caramel has cooled and the buttercream has been made, we can put everything together.

Step 17

I started by cutting off the tops of the cake layers, just so that they were more flat and even but you don't need to do this.

Step 18

Place one of your cake layers down onto a plate or cake board, spread some of the buttercream on top of this, then pipe a border of the buttercream around the edge of the cake. Add a thin layer of the cooled caramel in the middle of this.

Step 19

Add the second layer of cake on top. Then leave the cake in your fridge for about 20 minutes before decorating.

Step 20

Now you can decorate however you want. I just iced the whole cake in the buttercream, added a drip to the sides of the cake with the leftover caramel and then piped some buttercream swirls on top.

Step 21

Cut into it and enjoy!