
Chocolate Dulce de Leche Cake
Steps involved
Make dulce de leche
Make cake layers
Make buttercream
Assemble and ice cake
Add icing dollops
READ BEFORE CONTINUING: The following recipes are scaled to make the cake pictured above -- a 4 layer cake made with 6-inch round cake layers. If you wish to make a smaller cake, please scale down these recipes.
recipes used
1.5 - 2 batches Italian meringue buttercream
I made this buttercream vanilla bean flavored by adding 1tsp. of vanilla bean paste to my 1.5x batch (can add less or more to taste)
I always like to have extra buttercream rather than not enough, so if you're not sure how much to use, I would recommend 2
Dulce de leche (recipe below)
dulce de leche
Ingredients:
2 cans (14 oz. each) sweetened condensed milk
Preheat oven to 400° F.
Empty the two cans of sweetened condensed milk into an 8 inch glass pan.
Cover tightly with foil.
Place pan in a larger roasting pan and pour hot water in until the water comes halfway up the side of the smaller pan.
Bake for 1 hour, then check the water in the pan, refilling if necessary.
Bake for another hour. (You can bake for more or less time depending on how dark you want the dulce de leche to be)
Carefully remove from oven and allow to cool.
Stir until smooth.
Colors used
For this cake I used cocoa powder and dulce de leche to create the colors you see.
To get the dark brown color I added Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder until the desired color was achieved. If you want it to be darker without adding more cocoa powder, you can add brown or black food coloring. (I prefer Wilton Color Right Food Coloring System.
To get the tan color, I added a small amount of dulce de leche to my vanilla bean buttercream. To make the color even richer you can add yellow and brown food coloring.
These supplies are listed below in the supplies/tools section.
Supplies/tools
To find the tools I use for almost every cake I make and decorate (including pans, cake boards, icing smoothers, etc.), click here.
The supplies/tools below are specifically for decorating this cake, which I used in addition to the ones in the link above.*
*Some of these links may be affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I earn a small amount from some purchases, however, this does not affect my recommendations.
Decorating the cake
After the cake has been assembled and the crumb coat is added:
Fill three piping bags with each of the 3 icings (vanilla bean, tan, dark brown) and cut a medium/large hole in the bottom of each one.
With the dark brown color, pipe horizontally around the bottom of the cake. Continue piping rings around the cake until the dark brown color is about 1/4 of the way up the side of the cake.
Above the dark brown, pipe rings of the tan color around the cake until about halfway up the cake.
Finish piping rings around the cake with vanilla bean icing until you reach the top of the cake.
Ice the top of the cake with vanilla bean icing.
With an icing smoother, smooth the sides of the cake, cleaning the smoother after each pass.
Set up another piping bag with Wilton tip #1M.
Using the three piping bags from before, pipe a line of icing into the piping bag so there is one stripe of each color inside.
Pipe "swirly dollops" on top of the cake. (see .gif above to understand what I mean by "swirly dollops")
Optional: Using a grater, shave chocolate on top of cake.
Slice and enjoy :)
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