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Saturday, November 26, 2011

Seb cake (walnut and coffee cake with salted caramel and banana)

I woke up before S, and decided to make him a cake because I like him.  It should contain many of his favourite things: coffee, walnuts, salt, banana...

Cake mix based on this recipe.

For the cake:
1 cup fake milk
1 tsp cider vinegar
1¼ cups plain flour
2 tbsp cornstarch
¾ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
⅓ cup veg oil
¾ cup sugar
1 tsp coffee granules dissolved in 2 tsp hot water
¼ tsp vanilla essence
¼ cup walnut pieces

For the caramel:
1 cup white sugar
¼ cup water
2-3 drops lemon juice
¼ cup coconut milk
1 tbsp marg
1 tsp sea salt

For finishing:
1 banana
~2 tbsp chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 350F. Line the bases of two cake tins.

Mix the fake milk and vinegar and set aside to curdle.

Beat together the fake milk mixture, oil, sugar, coffee and vanilla in a large bowl. Separately sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, and salt. Add wet to dry and mix until no large lumps remain, adding the walnut pieces in the final few strokes.

Divide between the cake tins and bake for ~30 min. Allow to cool.

Caramel consistency - thick, sticky, not hard
While the cake is baking, make the caramel.  Clean a saucepan thoroughly and spread evenly across the base of the pan.  Add the water and make sure all the sugar is wet.  Bring the sugar-water mix to a steady boil (be very careful, it will be super hot).  Add a couple of drops of lemon juice to inhibit crystallisation.  Boil until it starts to change colour (to brown).  Do not stir - swirl occasionally to make sure it is cooking evenly, but stirring may set off crystallisation and that would not be good.  When it reaches a rich brown colour and starts to smoke a little, take it off the heat.  Prepare yourself for potential spitting hot sugar danger, then add in the coconut milk, marg and salt.  Stir gently, while avoiding getting hot sugar on you.  Allow to cool.

When cake and caramel are both well-cooled, sandwich the cake with half the caramel (and some sliced banana, if you like), and drizzle the rest of the caramel on top.  Decorate the top with some chopped walnuts.

It's half gone already, so I think it was a success!  He said it might have been his favourite ever cake.  The cake mix was very runny and I thought I might have forgotten something / it might come out all wrong, but it baked up fine.  This was my first real caramel (previous problems with over-stirring, not boiling for long enough...), and it was good.  This tutorial was useful.  I'm thinking about variations on it now - thickness, intensity of colour etc...  The banana and nuts worked really well in combination, and offset the sugary caramel.  Those three together drowned out the coffee a bit though - could perhaps be tweaked somewhat to let the coffee through more.
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