How to Tell When Your Butter is Hot...

I was excited to see this challenge as it would be my first sweet challenge. All that soon changed though and I am afraid to say that there is only one word to sum this challenge up - DISASTER!

After reading about other members progress I decided to attempt the caramel syrup. All seemed to be going fine and was happy with the colour and texture so left the syrup to cool as directed. I go back to my syrup to find it had solidified. Anyway, 3 batches of syrup later and I am out of sugar and still not managed to stop the caramel process in time so decide I will have to work with what I have. I re-heated my syrup and decided to work with it while it was still warm and hope it didn’t effect the cake too much.


The sponge was a simple process and looked divine. My sponge rose slightly and was a good height and lovely and dense with caramel flavour.

So, I finally felt that the challenge was improving and that surely with only the caramel butter cream icing what more could possibly go wrong.

I browned off my butter, sieved it as directed, did a double glance at my sieve -
yes you guess it I had melted it!!!

Still don’t get how that happened! I quickly hid the melted evidence and moved on to my second attempt (minus the sieving stage), again I had to re-heat my solid mass that I was attempting to pass off as caramel syrup. The syrup was divine though and struggled to stop eating it!

Overall the cake looked ok considering the troubles I had had and everyone who had a slice said it was very sweet but they still ate it all!


Can't say I would be rushing to make this again. Needless to say that after the trouble I had with the syrup I decided that the caramels were more than my nerves could take!

- Denise