Chocolate Carmel Cake!

I love chocolate cake, and this is one of the best ways to have chocolate cake! And it is super easy. I made it for my Mom's birthday. 

Here's how you start, a big package of caramels. Yum! The hardest part is not eating them all while your baking! 

Step One: Unwrap Caramels

Step Two: Melt Caramels in a medium sized pot...

Mixed with a can of sweetened condensed milk...

Brought to a boil....

Then cooked until slightly thickened.

Meanwhile, During the candy unwrapping, mix up your favourite chocolate cake recipe and pour HALF of the batch into the desired cake pan and bake for 15 mins. 

Now you have a cake that looks like this....

And a batch of caramel sauce, here is where this cake gets awesome, Pour the caramel sauce over the half-baked cake and allow to spread...

Yum! Now pour the remaining cake batter overtop of the caramel.... and finish baking until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Now, While thats finishing, I made the Whipped Chocolate Caramel Gnache. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart, and it worked out pretty well for me. 

First step: Combine the sugar, water and cornsyrup together in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, then allow the mixture to cook for approximately 10 mins. 

In a separate saucepan heat up the whipping cream. 

Once the sugar mixture reaches 350 degrees, remove from heat and allow to sit for a min. Then add the cream to the sugar mixture and stir to combine, then let cool for approximately 10 mins. 

Now pour this mixture over the chopped chocolate and mix on slow until the sides of the bowl have cooled. Then slowly mix in the butter and mix until thick. 

Now the cake is ready to come out of the oven and should look something like this....

See the caramel ribbons running through the rich chocolate? One word, Yum! 

Now I roughly iced the cake with the whipped caramel gnache and it looked something like this.....

At this point it was hard to not just eat the cake then! It looked and smelled so good! Then to add something to it for my Mom's Birthday I added a coco crown that had candy gems and a green ribbon, It turned out really cute and tasted so good!!! 

.....and looks even cuter on my crown cake stand!