The other day was my very good friend’s birthday–a very big birthday!–so I made him a very big cake. This here confection is a chocolate cake with salted chocolate caramel ganache filling and salted chocolate caramel butter cream, with a sprinkling of fleur de sel (fancy sea salt). Pure choco-salt-insanity!!! This flavor profile is based on a salty chocolate caramel truffle I’ve been making forever and which is a favorite treat of the birthday man in question, so I decided to see if I could turn the truffle into a cake. What do you know, it worked!
I’m going to share the recipe in another post, but for now I thought I’d talk a little about how I did the decorations. This cake was super, super easy to decorate and required just about zero skills, and was also really quick–so the next time you’re looking for something festive but fast and foolproof to put on a cake, try this! Start by piping the dots on the sides of the cake, working in rows from the bottom up. I used chocolate ganache for my side dots, but you could use butter cream or any type of frosting you have on hand, even the stuff that comes in the tube from the supermarket. I used a large tip, like a #12 for the bottom round of dots, then went down in size for the subsequent rows, down to a #2 or so. Easy peasy!
For the top I used butter cream and a #12 tip, and just piped dollops all over the surface, working from the outside in. You might think you need to have a really steady hand for this kind of thing, but honestly it doesn’t have to be perfect–in the end, you won’t even be able to tell whether all your rounds are perfectly circular or whether there are gaps between some dollops here and there. I swear!
I finished off the top with a light snow shower of fleur de sel. Because what’s better than a salty show shower?
Oh, chocolate and salt. I love you so.
Sigh.
So all that was left to do after the cake was dotted and salted was to party down and gobble it up (oh, and light a bazillion candles)…
Check back soon for the recipe for this cake… and I’ll have to post my truffle recipe too. Oof, there’s gonna be a lot of chocolate hanging around this house.
*Special thanks to Laura for the party pics! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY D! xoxo
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Holy gawd, that looks amazing!
I’m drooling! SRSLY.
Oh man, that looks really yummy. I love chocolate cake. I’m a Type 1 Diabetic…and I think my blood sugar just went high, looking at the photos. Hehehe…~sigh~ Caaaaake!
This looks AMAHZING!!!!! and salted caramel, like really, how can you go wrong?
That cake looks so good! I’d love to dive right into it and eat it all up. Yummm. Your book just made it to my library. Can’t wait to check it out!
OMG. This will be the end of me. Stop it.
Are you going to post this delicious recipe soon? Im just dying waiting for it!
I really NEED the recipe for this…I have never in my life thought about eating salt and chocolate or with caramel but everyone has talked about it so much lately it is burned in my brain “that I have to make this cake” Please put the recipe on soon or email it to me? I thank you so much, I am one of your newest followers and a huge fan!