I was embarrassingly excited about caramel week from the moment I heard of its existence. ‘Now that’, I thought, ‘is going to be a fun bake off bake along week’. I mean, who doesn’t love caramel? People who are wrong, that’s who.
Stroopwafels are one of my favourite things ever… but I don’t have a waffle iron. I was very torn. There was a serious moment when I considered buying one (I got to the ‘looking up prices on Amazon’ stage), but it seems a bit too insane and profligate to buy an expensive bit of kit just for the sake of making one bake off bake along technical challenge. Even on caramel week.
Realistically I would never use it again, and in my teeny tiny kitchen every single bit of kit has to be there for a good reason. It’s a bit rubbish, actually, for them to set a technical challenge that requires an obscure bit of equipment, so people at home generally can’t join in. Also, considering that every single person messed up the stroopwafel caramel, I reckon they were either given insufficient instructions or insufficient time. I mean, if half of them messed it up then fine – but all of them?
So, down to a choice of two things. I absolutely love a millionaire’s shortbread, but since I have done the signature challenge every single week for the bake off bake along so far, I thought this was perhaps my one chance to give a showstopper a go. You know, when it wasn’t something insane, like a biscuit board game or a bread sculpture. A caramel cake seems pretty reasonable. I make stupid huge cakes fairly often.
It felt like cursing myself to think this, but I have never been particularly scared by the concept of making caramel. One of the things I bake most often is salted caramel brownies, so I make caramel for those all the time. And it hasn’t gone wrong yet. Cue targeted lightning strike from the heavens directed at my kitchen and everything blowing up.
It was actually fine. But I did cheat slightly in that I didn’t use a spun sugar decoration. I’ve done spun sugar at culinary school, and I love playing with it, but… well, to be honest, it’s an absolute and total pain cleaning up little bits of spun sugar when they are scattered and hardened all over your kitchen, and now that I’m working full time I have to cram these bake along sessions into sneaky little grabbed hours.
So here we have it: a chocolate brownie and pistachio cake, sandwiched with a salted caramel layer and a pistachio buttercream, decorated with raspberries, homemade honeycomb, and pistachio caramel shards. It’s not the prettiest thing ever. It’s fairly messy, and I was rushing. But it was tasty. And it has caramel, chocolate, and pistachio. And those are three of my favourite things.
So where’s the recipe?
This might be a bit of a cop out, but I’m not sharing the recipe, because it would be incredibly long and complicated. Two different types of cake, salted caramel, pistachio buttercream, honeycomb, pistachio shards… I am assuming no one is going to be casually making this! Do let me know in the comments if you’re particularly after the recipe for any of the elements of the cake and I will happily provide it.
Another week, another bake off bake along done, and enough caramel made to use up all the white sugar in my baking cupboard. And there was a really serious amount of sugar in my baking cupboard.
This looks absolutely incredible! I’d love to have the recipe for the pistachio cake and buttercream if you’re willing to share them
Of course! The pistachio cake is just this one with the blackberries left out, baked in an 18cm circular tin rather than a loaf tin – http://abondgirlsfooddiary.co.uk/2017/05/16/pistachio-blackberry-and-lemon-loaf-cake/
The buttercream is a very basic 1:2 butter to icing sugar, in this case 400g butter to 800g icing sugar, with 200g pistachios. Let the butter go utterly soft at room temperature and then beat until light and smooth and fluffy with the icing sugar. Blitz the pistachios with 2 or 3 tbsp water until a rough paste, then beat that paste into the buttercream. I added a dot of green gel food colouring to boost the colour and make it more pistachio-y!
Hope that helps but do let me know if you have more questions xx
That’s great, thanks! I’m a sucker for anything pistachio
Me too! If you search ‘pistachio’ on this blog a LOT comes up…
Hoooooray a beautiful and fantastic cake! I love this one, you’d done amazingly! Alice xxx
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Thanks very much lovely! xxx
This looks so good! I would absolutely gobble it up! xx
Haha, thank you. Unfortunately it’s not very vegan 🙁 xx
Oooh you gotta share the pistachio buttercream recipe!! It looks INSANELY good xx
Lynsey || One More Slice
Thank you! It’s simple. The buttercream is a very basic 1:2 butter to icing sugar, in this case 400g butter to 800g icing sugar, with 200g pistachios. Let the butter go utterly soft at room temperature and then beat until light and smooth and fluffy with the icing sugar. Blitz the pistachios with 2 or 3 tbsp water until a rough paste, then beat that paste into the buttercream. I added a dot of green gel food colouring to boost the colour and make it more pistachio-y! xx
I am very tempted to pay you to send me a piece! It looks so good but my successful attempts at baking a cake have only been boxed cakes. I would like to try it though! I wonder if you could make a beginner-friendly version?
Ha, depends on how far away you live! I have been known to send baked goods in the post before. Well, the basic cake is just this pistachio cake without the blackberries, which is a very forgiving recipe: http://abondgirlsfooddiary.co.uk/2017/05/16/pistachio-blackberry-and-lemon-loaf-cake/
Absolutely love how you’ve decorated it and the combination of pistachio and honeycomb and chocolate, delicious! x
Thank you! They are some of my favourite flavours 🙂 x
This is so stunning
Thank you!
I never would have put these flavors together–so creative of you! Looks delicious.
Thank you! Pistachio is one of my favourite flavours so I put it with everything…