I hate this cake with a passion.
After turning my kitchen upside down, dirtying a bazillion bowls and utensils, and spending 4 hours to create this monster, this Sweet and Salty cake (a salted caramel chocolate cake) turned out to be one extremely fussy and topsy turvy ugly-ass cake.
The recipe comes from the cookbook Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. The photo of the cake in the book looked gorgeous (of course), with layers of rich dark chocolate cake and neat layers of frosting in between. Mine … not so much. Check out how hideous it turned out:
Though the cake tasted pretty good, it really wasn’t worth the effort. I’m not even going to post the recipe for it. I’m so mad at it.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2011.
Wow that is really disappointing. I recently bought that book and was looking forward to trying that cake.
Sorry to burst your bubble on that one. Perhaps you will have better luck with it!
I’m sure their other recipes are probably good!
I actually visited Baked in Brooklyn last week and had a slice of this very cake. It was tall and lovely, just like in the photograph from the cook book. But who am I kidding, did it matter what it looked like as long as it tasted awesome? No way. Yes, it was delicious and I’m glad I made the weird, awful trek to Red Hook for it.
I am a very experienced baker and cook and I had the same issues with this cake. The caramel refuses to sink into the cake and is instead running out and down the sides of the cake. The frosting is not frosting. It’s melted chocolate and also a complete nightmare. I followed the recipe to the LETTER and used the highest quality ingredients. So disappointed.
I absolutely love this cake. It is definitely a pain, but worth the effort. It didn’t look exactly like the picture, but the moist cake and salty kick are winners. I used a pastry bag in a swirl pattern to get the icing more even, and chilling the cakes a little helps a lot.