Let me tell you something. This was A PRODUCTION. And unlike everyone who has praised this cake to high heaven, I'm not totally convinced; I wasn't absolutely blown away, especially given the amount of work it was and my expectations for a salty, caramely, chocolate deliciousness bomb.! It certainly didn't send me into fits, nothing too unusual or difficult, just a lot of moving pieces (and definitely a serious clean-up job). But I think a large part of that has to do with refrigeration. If it had been at room temp, I think it would have been absolutely divine. To be honest, though, I'm not sure it beats my standby marvelous chocolate cake, blogged below, and that's a lot less work and fuss!
Notes: many! Let's take them one by one.
Cake: This cake is nice and nondescript; with all the other things going on, it wasn't really the star player, but it's not like it was a fussy recipe or anything. Your basic chocolate cake, and only uses cocoa powder which is kind of nice. I had 3 9" pans so I used them, sue me. A thicker layer would have been better, I can't deny it, but the thought of baking 3 8" cakes in succession just kind of wore me out. Definitely freeze for a while before frosting. I only did for an hour or two, I think. See Assembly notes.
Salted Caramel: I overdid this a little teensy bit and it was just slightly burned, but still tasted delicious, just be sure to watch it closely. I actually would have liked to have more of it for the cake; I didn't end up tasting it really at all in the finished product, which was really a bummer. Maybe 1.5 it, reserving extra for drizzling :)
Whipped Caramel Ganache Frosting: This was really an outrageous amount of frosting, I have no idea why anyone would need so much of it. I probably used 2/3 of it and that was too much. I'd 3/4 it at the very least, especially if smaller cakes are used! Sheesh. Wasted some of my precious Valhrona that I carried in my suitcase all the way from France on extra frosting that I ended up throwing away :(. This didn't really taste like caramel at all, even before its time in the fridge, but that's not to say it wasn't delicious. Consistency is the biggest issue here. It was lovely and light before its time in the fridge, and I guess I thought it would stay that way, but no dice; in the fridge for 30 min or so, I could rewhip to a good texture and frost. More than that and it was too hard, although I don't know what would happen if you let it come to room temp and rewhipped.
Assembly: ah, assembly. A challenge, to be sure. From start to finish, this took me something like 5 hours, which makes doing it the day of difficult, but sadly that's what I'm going to have to recommend for maximum tastiness. So here's my final breakdown: the caramel can definitely be made ahead with no problems. I'd imagine the cake could be made the previous day, frozen, and left at room temp for a while to defrost the day of, or to be safer it should be made day-of and just frozen for half an hour or so. But the frosting should be made, chilled for just a bit, and then spread on the cake, which should be served very soon afterwards.
FINAL INSTRUCTIONS: Caramel day-ahead, refrigerated.
Day-of: Bake cake, trim, put in freezer while making frosting. Make frosting, put in fridge for 20 min; take out cake to return to semi-room temp; take out caramel. Wait for frosting to chill; take out and re-whip. Pipe a rim of frosting onto bottom layers, fill with caramel, and plop those babies on top of each other! Frost cake, top with sea salt, serve soon afterwards, hopefully without needing to refrigerate finished cake.
CAAAAAAKE.
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