Caramel Mocha Cake

I have been craving for mocha cake for several days now. Was going through my cookbooks when I saw this recipe from Aurelia Yap's cookbook -- Caramel Mocha Cake. Mmmmm... sounds yummy. One problem though: c-a-r-a-m-e-l. There are two things I try to avoid when it comes to baking. One is sugar cooking. The other one is making puff pastry. But my cravings took over, and so I went ahead and baked the cake.

Cuisson de sucre -- one of the topics in school that I had never really paid attention to. When I try to make syrup though, there are two things I always keep in mind. First, never agitate the sugar. Second, always have a pastry brush ready, to brush around the sides of the saucepan while the sugar is boiling.

For some reason though, my sugar ended up looking like this:



The picture above was taken 30 minutes after I had been cooking my sugar. My sugar should have turned amber by then. For some reason though, the sugar crystallized. Still don't know why it did, as I had been very careful about it. After concluding that the sugar was ruined, I asked our maid to wash the saucepan. But she needed to reheat the pan because the sugar was already rock hard by then. After a few minutes, she came back and showed me the saucepan with syrupy amber sugar! Apparently, all it needed was a few more minutes of heating.

Here is the recipe for the caramel mocha cake:

Ingredients:

2 1/4 c cake flour
3 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
3/4 c caster sugar
1/2 c cooking oil
7 egg yolks
1 T instant coffee
1/2 c hot water
2 T evaporated milk
2 T creme de cacao (I used Bailey's)
1 t vanilla
7 egg whites
1 t cream of tartar
3/4 c caster sugar

1. Into a bowl, combine and sift once the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.

2. Make a well in the center, add cooking oil and egg yolks and coffee dissolved in the hot water.

3. Add evaporated milk, creme de cacao, vanilla. Blend well.

4. Beat egg whites together with cream of tartar, till light and fluffy then add remaining 3/4 c sugar.

5. Fold egg whites to the coffee batter mixture. Pour into a 9" x 13" x 2" pan.

6. Bake at 325 F for 50 minutes.

7. Invert. Let cool.

Caramel Icing

1/2 c caster sugar
1/4 c water
3/4 c caster sugar
6 T flour
1 can evaporated milk (use the big can)
2 yolks
1 t vanilla
1/4 c butter

1. Let boil the sugar and water until amber.

2. Combine the remaining 3/4 c of sugar with flour and add into the syrup.

3. Stir and add remaining milk.

4. Continue stirring until thick.

5. Add yolks.

**Turn off stove before adding vanilla and butter into the caramel frosting.

6. Continue stirring till well blended.

7. Frost cake immediately.

Some notes:
1. You can substitute regular sugar for caster sugar.
2. For the caramel icing, adding in the flour-sugar mixture to the amber resulted in some big time lumps! Suggestion -- add in the evaporated milk first before adding in the flour-sugar mixture for easier handling.
3. Add in evaporated milk slowly. The original recipe did not specify what size can of evaporated milk to use. So I did it by tancha. :)
4. Caramel frosting will be very sticky once cooled. So make sure to spread the frosting while it is still hot.

**Pictures to follow once I've resized them. :)