Chocolate & Salted Caramel Bundt Cake

See this cake? I blame you lot….entirely!

I asked you your favourite flavour combinations over on Facebook and this came up time and time again. It had mind altering effects and before I knew it you had brainwashed me and I was baking you this cake.

The cake is my regular chocolate cake mix, but a bit bigger for the Bundt tin. I love this tin too, it’s by Nordicware and you can buy the same design from Selfridges (I know someone will ask!) It’s a 12-cup bundt but don’t worry if yours is smaller, I’m not filling the cake tin fully, as long as your tin will hold 1500ml water it will be fine for this cake. Its about the equivalent of a 9″ round cake.

Bundt’s seem all the rage at the moment, popping up right left and centre and with good reason too. You get a great cake the perfect size for sharing and because of the shape the cake cooks through quickly and evenly. And don’t worry about getting it out of the tin either – I’ve got those instructions covered too.

Ingredients:

Cake

185g butter, softened

330g light muscovado sugar

3 eggs, large

230g plain flour

70g self-raising flour

80g cocoa powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

250ml milk

2 tbsps vinegar (malt or white wine)

Salted Caramel Icing

70g caster sugar

25g light muscovado sugar

45g golden syrup

100ml double cream

25g butter, diced

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp sea salt

175g icing sugar

To decorate – pinch of sea salt and chocolate shavings

Makes: 1 x 10″ Bundt Cake

Preheat the oven to 160c (fan)/180c/Gas Mark 4.

Start off measuring out the milk for the cake, add to it the vinegar and set it to one side for now.

Grease the bundt tin well, making sure you do the middle too. My favourite is still Cake Release spray and it’s done in a flash.

Cream together the butter and the sugar to a pasty mix.

Gradually beat in the eggs one by one.

Now add the flours, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and the milk/vinegar mix. Fold together until the cake mixture is evenly combined.

Transfer it to the prepared tin and roughly level the top.

Bake it in the oven for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes away clean.

Leave the cake in the tin to cool for 35 minutes. Set a timer and don’t forget.

After 35 minutes, set a cooling rack on the top of the tin and flip it over, the cake should just drop cleanly out!

Leave it to cool completely, trim the base level with a sharp serrated knife (bread knife) and then transfer it to a serving plate.

Now for the icing.

In a small pan gently heat together the sugars and syrup, just until the sugar has melted.

Add the butter, cream and vanilla and give it a good stir until it’s smoothly combined. Bring it to the boil and let it simmer for 1 minute.

Take it off the heat and stir in the salt. It’s quite heavily salted at this stage, remember it needs to be right now to come through the icing sugar.

Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl and pour over the salted caramel, being careful because it’s still very hot.

Stir together working out any lumps of icing sugar by pressing them against the side of the bowl with a spatula.

Now you need to pour it over the cake, if it seems too runny just keep stirring it until it cools and thickens enough otherwise pour it very slowly around the top of the cake.