The Great Picky Eater Caramel Cake!

The Picky Eater was home for spring break this week, and started getting a little bored but motivated after watching countless episodes of her new fave "The Great British Baking Show." She baked a spectacular cake which did her mother proud. Her being her, she followed her proclivities as an aspiring chemist to veer off recipe into unknown baking territory; this time with great success. (Sometimes not so much.)

Date, Mirin & Pear Caramel Cake
This was adapted from a gorgeous recipe, "Whiskey Date & Buttermilk Cake with Salted Pear Caramel Buttercream"courtesy of the blog Adventures in Cooking (the Dec 21, 2014 post) My modifications?  I don’t like buttercream, so I omitted that and just made the caramel.  I was also making this for four people, one of whom was me and one other of which was on a diet, so I scaled it down to 2 layers, not three.  It was still plenty tall.

Cake Part
4 ounces dates, cut in half and pits removed
Scant ¼ cup booze of your choice*
2 cups buttermilk
2 ¾ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon allspice
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Pear Caramel
¾ cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons water
1 pear, cored and minced
¼ cup unsalted butter
1 cup heavy cream (I just used milk because I couldn’t be bothered to buy cream)
¾ cup brown sugar
Pinch of fleur de sel to finish (optional)

OPTIONAL—whipping cream and pear (or apple) jam, custard, cream cheese, chevre, honey.  See notes on filling.

Boil the dates and (selected booze) in a small saucepan for ~10 minutes, until the dates look soft and most of the liquid has been absorbed.  Set aside to cool, and then chop roughly using a mezzaluna (or blitz in the food processor, but I like rustic date bits and not needing to clean the food processor).  Combine with the buttermilk and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF and grease two 8-inch cake pans.  Line the bottom of the pans with circles of parchment paper.

In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and allspice.  Set aside.

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or by hand with a spatula and some muscle) cream together the butter and both sugars until smooth.  Add the eggs one by one and mix well after each addition.

Remove the bowl from the mixer (if using) and add the ~1/3rd buttermilk, 1/3rd flour, carefully folding by hand.  Continue until all combined.  It is easy to overwork the batter using the machine.

Split the batter between the cake pans and bake until golden brown and set in the middle.  Our instant-read thermometer read 205ºF in the middle, and came out with no batter clinging to it.  This took 45 minutes, but our oven is notoriously slow.  The original recipe suggests 25-35 minutes.  When done, allow to cool for ~10 minutes before flipping them out of the pans and reflipping onto a wire cooling rack.

While the cake is baking and/or cooling, prepare the caramel.  Bring the minced pear, water and sugar to a boil over medium high heat until pale golden brown in color.  Add the milk/cream, butter, and brown sugar quickly, off the heat, while stirring continuously.  Heat this mixture over medium-low heat until it boils, keep at the boil for 2 minutes, then remove from the heat.

NOW.  What to do next.  What I did is fill the cake with caramel (trying to get lots of pear bits) and poured most of the remaining caramel over the top.  While this tasted excellent, it was determined to be structurally insufficient.  There are a variety of possibilities that I think would work well, which are listed below.  Some are more… uh….. involved than others.

Possible fillings:

• The aforementioned buttercream, but come on.  Gross.

• Make a pastry cream or custard and blend some of the caramel into it

• Spread with pear jam and then whipped cream

• Fill with cream cheese/chevre blended with honey

• Just do what I did

• Skip the layering bit and make a 1-layer cake.  

When done filling, cover the surface with the pear caramel, allowing it to run down the sides slightly.  If you want, sprinkle the top of the cake with a pinch of fleur de sel (but just a pinch, you’re not aiming for a salted caramel flavor). 

An interior view

Whatever you choose, the cake will be moist, spicy, and absolutely delicious.  The Daddy proclaimed it “actually very good” before launching into a Paul Hollywood impression inspired by my Great British Bake-Off streaming marathon.

*I used mirin, because it’s the only liquor in the house that actually belongs to me.  Mirin is an exceedingly sweet Japanese cooking wine, usually used to add the sweetness to Teriyaki and things like that.  If you are going to buy it, look closely at the ingredients.  A lot of stuff marked as ‘mirin’ is just watered down corn syrup.  The good stuff contains nothing but fermented rice.

Other possible flavouring agents include Cointreau, Armanac, Whisky (as in the original recipe), Cognac, Rum, and orange juice cut with water.  Personally I think the mirin-date combo was excellent.