It's been a long, long time since I last posted a recipe on my blog. Given that this started out primarily for recipes and foodie posts, it makes me sad that part of it has kind of disappeared recently but I've just not felt like baking much so there hasn't really been much worthy of posting and I've just had no inspiration or motivation! As I really want to get back to posting baking recipes, whilst I had some spare time last Friday I decided I'd finally get back in that kitchen and make something, and just see what I came up with. After a little browse through Pinterest (I'm loving it at the moment, you can follow me here if you want too) I liked the idea of some sort of caramel cake and after a look back through some of my older recipes, I think I came up with something pretty good.
I didn't want something that was too much fuss so I went for a simple sponge cake (I followed the one in my lemon drizzle cake and school sponge cake) and then I made my own icing which was so simple. This is a great cake to make when you just want something sweet and need something that doesn't require a load of fancy ingredients.
Ingredients: cake
225g butter
225g caster sugar
275g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
4 tbsp milk
Ingredients: icing
Icing sugar
caramel essence
water
Method:
1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees and line a large square baking tin
2. To make this really simple I just put all of the cake ingredients in a bowl and used an electric whisk to mix. If you don't have an electric whisk, add the ingredients one at a time starting with creaming the butter and sugar together, then adding in the eggs, vanilla extract, self raising flour, baking powder, and milk. Mix well until smooth
3. Pour into cake tin and bake for 35 minutes. I usually test it's done by inserting a skewer, if it comes out clean it's done, if not give it a bit longer
4. Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes then transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely
5. You can now prepare the icing and to be honest this is one to sort of work out as you go. I didn't measure the icing sugar, just poured some into a bowl, mixed in water as usual to make a smooth paste then added in about a tsp of the caramel essence. I then repeated this, but you'll know as you're going if you want to add more or not
6. Once the cake has cooled, pour over your icing and leave to set. Once set cut into squares, this makes 16
I'm so glad I finally went and baked something again! It had been so long but I enjoyed it so much so I definitely need to start making more time for it. Though this is a really simple recipe and cake, it tastes absolutely delicious and I couldn't recommend it enough. The caramel icing is lovely as you just get that hint of caramel every so often in each square but it's not too much.
Have you done much baking recently?