Best Caramel Cake Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is caramel cake made of? ›

Caramel Cake Ingredients

Butter, sugar, and eggs: You'll find these staple cake ingredients in almost every batter. Flour, baking powder, and salt: Ditto these dry ingredients. No need to buy cake flour for this recipe; we prefer the all-purpose you already have on hand.

The Duncan Hines Caramel Cake Mix is AWESOME as a base for cakes.

Ingredients for Homemade Caramel Frosting

Granulated sugar: You can't have caramel without sugar. As the sugar cooks, it caramelizes and deepens, providing an irresistible flavor. All-purpose flour: Helps thicken the frosting. Whole milk: Helps thin the hot caramel for a smooth consistency.

Yes, this caramel cake is freezer-friendly! You can freeze the assembled and frosted cake or individual slices. Wrap the cake or slices in a couple of layers of plastic before freezing for up to 3 months. Bring the cake to room temperature before you serve it.

Butterscotch vs Caramel

The difference between butterscotch and caramel is that caramel is made with white granulated sugar and cooked to 340 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas butterscotch is made with brown sugar and cooked to 289 degrees Fahrenheit.

I'm a baker and I made white cake using boxed mixes from Pillsbury, Duncan Hines, and Betty Crocker. The Duncan Hines cake was moist, not overly sweet, and the fluffiest of the three. The cakes from Pillsbury and Betty Crocker were good, too, but I had a few minor issues with them.

Baking tip #2: adding milk to your box cake mix in place of water adds a dense texture to your dessert leaving it moist and flavorful like a homemade cake. Or, if you prefer, you can add buttermilk, giving your cake a tangy flavor to balance out the sweetness.

As a professional baker, I don't often use boxed mixes, but I appreciate how easily they bring a cake together. I think premade mixes are great for beginners gaining confidence around the kitchen and also for last-minute cake "emergencies."

The process of caramelization consists of heating sugar slowly to around 170 °C (340 °F). As the sugar heats, the molecules break down and re-form into compounds with a characteristic colour and flavour.

Sugar Note: Most chefs say that only granulated sugar can be successfully caramelized; other sugars — such as brown sugar and unrefined sugar such as cane sugar — contain impurities that can inhibit caramelization. It's those impurities that can burn before the sugar has time to caramelize.

Can you leave a caramel cake out overnight? ›

How do you store caramel cake? This caramel cake can be left out at room temperature in an airtight container for a few days. After that it should be refrigerated and will last up to a week.

Cakes glazed with powdered sugar mixed with milk or other liquids will be fine at room temperature for 3-4 days. Same goes for a high sugar content cooked icing, like the brown sugar icing on a traditional caramel cake.

Un-iced: If you don't need to ice your cake until the day, you can bake your cake at least 2-3 days ahead of time. But you will need to store it carefully. Ensure that you wrap the cake and have it stored in an airtight container so it doesn't lose moisture.

What you make out of condensed milk is dulce de leche. It's often called caramel or toffee, but it's not really either. The recipe is trivial: pour the condensed milk in a pan. Heat it over low heat, stirring continuously, until it turns into dulce de leche.

Ok you may not have known this but, ~newsflash~ caramel is literally just cooked sugar with a little bit of butter (for stability) and heavy cream (for flavor & mouthfeel) stirred in at the end. The longest (and “hardest”) part of making caramel is just toasting and melting down the sugar at the very beginning.

Caramel is made by heating sugar (either with a liquid or by itself, more on that below!) in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until it melts and becomes clear.

Caramel is, simply, burned sugar. We want to let it melt, darken to an amber color and take on a deep and bittersweet flavor. The best, most flavorful caramel starts with this step. You can caramelize sugar two ways— with the dry method or wet method.