caramel trials

I'm not scared of much, but caramel genuinely terrifies me. I have scars from molten sugar that seemed to leap out of the pan and take a couple of layers of epidermis down in the fight. But, not one to give in to a foe easily, I have had a go at a couple of recipes this week that have caramel as a foundation.

Firstly, a Burnt Sugar Bundt cake from "Baked Explorations", a book of sweet treat recipes form America by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, a couple of lovely looking boys who own the Baked store in NYC.   No, I have never been there but a girl can dream can't she?

This is a dense, close crumbed and frankly enormous cake.  As the base, it uses a burnt sugar caramel which is made into a sauce consistency by the addition of  cream and coconut milk.  This is added to a fairly standard cake mixture.  The sauce is also used in the icing which is buttercream with the added sauce and a healthy slug of dark rum.  The whole thing is topped with shards of broken hard caramel so another opportunity to injure myself.

Thankfully, it all passed uneventfully but I think I may have wussed out a bit.  The cake wasn't quite as dark as the one ion the picture but it still went down a treat with colleagues!.

The second, and much less conventional recipe was Yottam Otolengi's Surprise Tarte Tatin form his beautiful book Plenty.  The surprise it that it is a savoury tarte, using potato as the main ingredient rather than fruit.  When I saw the recipe for a pie using potato, tomato, onion and cheese, all topped (or bottomed) with puff pastry, I just had to make it.  It was the first thing form the book I made and this is my third attempt.  I have made sure it is on a weekend when there are no visitors though to ensure that I get a decent sized slice this time!

All of the ingredients are cooked separately so a caramel of sugar and a little butter goes in the base of the dish.  You have to be pretty quick spreading this on the dish as it hardens really quickly.  Then it is just a case of arranging the potatoes, tomatoes and onions, slicing on some cheese and tucking it all under a puff pastry sheet (shop made this time).

Once it is done, it looks pretty good before it is turned out...

but it is a thing of beauty when it is properly finished.

Even better, it can be assembled up to 24 hours before you bake it so perfect if you have people coming to eat but son't want to get too stressed about cooking.  Finally, although it comes from a vegetarian cookbook, I haven't found a carnivore yet who hasn't loved it.

And it was a scar free week of caramel - not bad.