Cake Hour Cackle: Chocolate Cake with Almond Brittle and Dulce de Leche

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Chocolate Cake with Almond Brittle and Dulce de Leche

For the second entry of our student cake competition 2012 we had a veteran of last year and the challenger in our tiramisu off that could not unseat the reigning champion although he gave it his best shot. So there was some anticipation to see what he could come up with. He consulted with a friend and opted for a new recipe. This was a single layer chocolate cake that he coated with homemade dulce de leche and homemade almond brittle. The cake was also made from scratch...no boxed cakes here.

Back to compete again!

Interesting and delicious looking!

The full effect of the coating!

That's dulce de leche - aka caramel - with embedded almond brittle!

The cake was very moist and was good and chocolatey but not outrageously sweet. Our chef attributed the moistness to using yoghurt as an ingredient. He also put some coffee in with the chocolate which is always a good combination. Atop this all he put a layer of caramel (dulce de leche) that he had boiled down himself and as a contrast to the sweetness of the caramel he sprinkled it with black Hawaiian sea salt. I wonder what makes it black. It sounds great though, doesn't it. Serving caramel with salt seems to be a bit of a trend these days but the two do complement each other well and that was the case here too. Finally a layer of almond brittle was added for a crunchy cover.

Those little black flecks are black Hawaiian salt!

The remaining brittle will hit the plates!

This was plated out with a swirl of dulce de leche topped with a small amount of the brittle. The presentation was quite lovely and appreciated by all. The combination of the three homemade sweets worked very well and for all the extra effort our student gets the first five star rating. The pressure is on!