Monday 22 March 2010

Caramel Crown Cake

This weekend I took up the Claytons Bloggers' challenge to 'Pimp that Biscuit' - and I decided to make a big Caramel Crown.

The Caramel Crown is one of my favourite bought biscuits. It has a crunchy base topped with a layer of caramel, and the whole thing is coated in milk chocolate. Mmmmm......

After much close inspection of the Caramel Crown - slicing, dissecting, tasting etc - it was decided that the base was a quite plain and not particularly sweet biscuit - so I decided to use packaged biscuits and crush them up.

I chose a reasonably plain type of biscuit - kind of like an oaty digestive - and crushed two packs of them finely. Then I melted 200 g butter and stirred it in.

I lined a 22 cm springform pan with baking paper, and then formed the cake base by pressing in the crumb and butter mixture, and moulding it into a shallow bowl shape.

The original biscuit has tiny bumps around the biscuit edge, but after a few unsuccessful attempts at copying this effect, I decided that particular feature wasn't very important (except that it's probably the reason the word 'crown' is in the biscuit's name. Never mind).

I cooked it for 15 minutes on 180 C and let it cool completely before removing it from the tin and putting it on the serving plate.

The Caramel Crown has a layer of caramel (as you would expect) and as I have very little experience at making that type of thing, I decided to cheat and use caramel topping from a tin.

To be more authentic, it would need a smooth, home-made caramel, like the caramel you find in Twix and Mars bars.

Annoyingly, for some reason I stopped taking step-by-step photos at this point, but after I filled the biscuit case with the caramel, I then melted a 200 g bar of cooking chocolate, let it cool for a while, and poured it over the caramel part of the cake. Then I melted another bar of chocolate, and when that had cooled and thickened a bit, I used it to pour and spread over the edges and sides.

Quite a lot of chocolate pooled around the biscuit base, but that was fine because I had put strips of baking paper under the sides that I could remove afterwards.

I put the cake in the fridge to set the chocolate, and when it was starting to firm up, I drew a few lines in the top in an attempt to copy the ridges on the top of the original Caramel Crowns.

Then when the chocolate was completely set, I trimmed around the pooled chocolate at the base with a sharp knife, in order to remove the baking paper strips.

I had timed my Caramel Crown Cake-making so that it could be my Number One Son's (15th) birthday cake but didn't want to stick candles in my creation. So I stuck them in two obliging Caramel Crowns instead.

After the singing and blowing out of the candles, the cake was whipped back into the kitchen and cut with a sharp knife to reveal the interior, which looked pretty much like the original. It tasted similar but not identical, was very sweet and very popular.

Ingredients
:
400 g plain oatmeal biscuits
200 g unsalted butter
1 tin of top and fill caramel
400 g (approx) milk cooking chocolate (good quality)

10 comments:

EmmCee said...

Love it and well done!

You're masterpiece is in the running to win a Batter Finger.

Good luck.

Coby said...

Oh {round of applause} well done Arista! There's nothing I don't love about that combination! Biscuit, caramel and chocolate? What a brilliant idea for a cake:D

hungryandfrozen said...

Caramel Crowns look exactly like what we call Toffee Pops here. Funnily enough I was thinking that I'd like to try making my own homemade version and now you've inspired me, this post shows that it's a very good idea :D Looks soooo delicious.

laura may said...

Oh My God! That is so awesome!! Great work doll!

lm.x

Rhyleysgranny said...

That looks great. Well done Arista. Clever idea using crushed up biscuits for the base. Good luck. x

Brownieville Girl said...

I'd love to be sitting down to a slice of your "biscuit" now Arista!

Good Luck:-D

Lorraine @NotQuiteNigella said...

Wow you got the detailing so correct! :o Bravo! :D

Lucie said...

This looks so good!!! Well done, this is just great. Love your blog. Lucie x

arista said...

Thanks for all your lovely comments - and nice to meet you, Lucie.

Von said...

This is so creative! I've never had a caramel crown but it sounds really good! And this cake looks really delicious......