Sweet and Salty Cake and a Giveaway - copy of Baked

A few months ago I blogged about seeing Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, the authors of Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. In that post, I mentioned that they encouraged anyone with moderate baking skills to bake their signature Sweet and Salty Cake. What I didn’t mention was that I bought an extra copy of their book to give away on my blog. I was eager to make the cake, but the quantities of butter, sugar, chocolate, and butter definitely make it a special-occasion cake, so I figured I would bake it when I had something to celebrate, like hitting one-hundred posts or my blogiversary, and give away the book at the same time. My blog recently hit one-hundred posts, which I would have mentioned before, but it was one-sentence-blog-post week and I had to be parsimonious with my words. And luckily, we have had an even more exciting reason to celebrate around here: I don’t usually like to talk about what we do between nine and five, but when Mr. Penpen was offered the new position that he had been hoping for, I found the perfect opportunity! Anyway, I finally got around to making the illustrious Sweet and Salty Cake and now I’m giving away the copy of the book. To enter the giveaway, just tell me your favorite kind of cake in the comment section. I will select the winner with a random number generator and announce the winner next week.



So the Sweet and Salty Cake. I was going to write this post yesterday, but I decided it was better to wait until I was a little removed from the experience, since by the time I got my sticky self out of the kitchen, I didn’t even feel like eating the cake. The cake has several components: a chocolate cake, caramel sauce, and whipped caramel ganache frosting, and I managed to have problems with two of them. The caramel sauce didn’t soak into the cake and I burned the first batch of caramel for the frosting (I look forward to the day when I have a successful caramel experience). My ineptitude frosting cakes didn’t help either, but that’s not the recipe’s fault, I just need more practice. In the midst of my problems, I looked up the cake online to see if other bakers had similar issues and found THIS POST at Sassy Radish where she renames the cake "I'm Going to Tear Hair Out of My Head and Curse Like a Sailor Cake.” That title seemed accurate at the time. I did not make the actual cake recipe in Baked. I had read on Sarah of Blue Ridge Baker’s blog that she wasn’t thrilled with the actual cake part and she seems to know her chocolate, so I tried a Devil’s Food cake from Cook’s Illustrated. The cake I made wasn’t my superlative chocolate cake, but covered with caramel it was quite yummy. Even after all the headaches, we thought the cake was fantastic. I gave the cake a 9.5 for Deliciousness and a 5 for Effort, giving it an EDR of 1.9. You can find the recipe HERE and HERE (and linked above on Sassy Radish, with some helpful tips), and it is definitely worth baking.



I decided since we were having such a special dessert, Eloise deserved a treat too, so I made her some pupcakes. Joy of Hot Oven, Warm Heart provided me with the recipe, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me passing it on to other dog lovers/bakers, I'm happy to email it. Eloise loved that I finally baked something just for her, though I fear that now she’ll become even more curious when I’m baking. I made the cupcakes minis, since she would devour the entire cake in one gulp either way. I had my camera on the sports/action setting in attempt to photograph her eating the pupcakes; she’s so fast that I really needed a video camera to record it.



And since this cake knocked my will to bake anything else yesterday, this is how far along I am on the TWD Creamiest Lime Meringue Pie.