Chocolate-Caramel Sticky Pudding

Day 110

As you can clearly see, this one isn’t pudding at all, so don’t let the name deceive you. In the tradition of English desserts, this is a very moist and decadent chocolate cake with a sticky sauce and a rich but surprisingly fluffy icing. I found the cake part of the recipe on a homesteader’s blog that I enjoy following (check it out: http://oursimplelife-sc.com), and I just had to try it. Then, I wondered what would happen if I tried something completely different with it; what if I poured a hot

Photo by Maggie Kapustin

caramel sauce over the cake and covered it overnight? And, the next day, what if I made a heavy cream-mascarpone icing for it?  Sometimes when I question things like that, I set myself up for an immediate failure, but this time, it was a raging success.

It was such a success in fact, that when I shared the cake with coworkers and friends, I got some incredibly positive feedback. One colleague said it was “a wicked good dessert” while another said it should be renamed “better than sex cake”! I had to come straight home, take a picture of the tiny remaining sliver, and share the recipe here.

Oh man, who knows what words of pleasure you’ll exclaim after that first bite, but I’m sure they’ll be comparable to my colleagues’ affirmations. This cake really is better than…well…almost everything. Enjoy!

Chocolate-Caramel Sticky Pudding

The steps are:

1.     Make cake and put in oven to bake (recipe below).

2.     While baking, make caramel sauce (recipe below).

3.     Once cake is out of oven, use a fork, toothpick, or skewer to make little holes all over.

4.     Pour caramel sauce all over cake. It will look really wet, but that’s a good thing.

5.     Cover tightly and allow to rest 3 hours or overnight.

6.     Make heavy cream-mascarpone icing (recipe below). This should keep cold to stay firm, so store in refrigerator until ready to spread over cake, just before service.

7.     Store any leftover cake in fridge.

8.     Note: This cake can be served cold (simply add “refrigerate” to step 5) or room temperature. It has a “wet” texture at room temperature and a “supremely moist” texture in fridge. The icing must be refrigerated, though, so once it’s iced, the fridge is the only option.

Cake* Ingredients:

         2 cups sugar

            2 cups sifted unbleached flour

            1 teaspoon baking powder

            2 teaspoons baking soda

            1/4 teaspoon salt

            1/2 cup cocoa

            1/2 cup vegetable oil

            1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

            2 eggs

            1 cup whole milk

            1 teaspoon vanilla

Cake Instructions:

Sift together flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder in a separate bowl and set aside.

In large mixing bowl dissolve cocoa in the hot coffee. Add oil and sugar, and mix well. Add flour mixture to the cocoa, coffee and oil mixtures.
Stir in milk and vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix well until all blended. Cake batter will be runny. Using a 9x13 cake pan, pour batter into a greased and floured pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Do not over bake. Let cake cool completely on a wire rack.

*Cake recipe from the incredibly impressive and useful website “Our Simple Homestead” at this link:  http://oursimplelife-sc.com/moist-chocolate-cake/

Caramel Sauce* Ingredients:

2 cups packed dark brown sugar

½ cup half and half

½ cup heavy cream

1 stick butter

pinch salt

2 tbs. vanilla extract

Caramel Sauce Directions:

Mix brown sugar, half and half, heavy cream, butter, and salt in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook while whisking gently for 5-7 minutes, until it gets thicker. It won’t be very thick. Add vanilla and cook another minute to thicken further. Turn off heat and cool slightly before pouring over warm chocolate cake.

*Sauce recipe is from the amazing Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond. Don’t you just love her? As usual, her recipe is spot-on perfection. Thank God she cooks for a living so the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of her labor. And learn to cook a little better ourselves. Here’s the link to her original recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/easy-caramel-sauce-recipe.html

Heavy Cream-Mascarpone Icing Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1- 8oz. container mascarpone cheese

Heavy Cream-Mascarpone Icing Directions:

In a mixer, whip all ingredients until stiff peaks form. If you realize you’ve whipped too much, add a bit more heavy cream and whip until desired consistency. (For this icing, the mascarpone holds the heavy cream longer than it would hold on its own.)