Chocolate Salted Caramel Petit Fours

By A Wee Bit of Cake - September 19, 2013

Chocolate Salted Caramel. Anyone who reads this blog will know of my love of it and I'm always trying to come up with new ideas for incorporating it into bakes. Part of me would love to add a whole salted caramel bit to the blog where we could all share the love of this amazing flavour combination but at the moment I'm not tech savvy enough to figure that out.

So anyway… last week on GBBO one of the challenges was to create some petite fours. I have been wanting to create these for ages so this was the perfect excuse. I took the recipe for my Chocolate Salted Caramel Cake and scaled it down and adapted it to suit.

I also discovered that when converting cups to grams a cup of sugar and a cup of flour weigh totally different amounts. First cake batch ended up being binned!

This really is so easy and I know some people worry about making caramel but trust me, this recipe works.

Makes: 25ish

Chocolate cake

125g SR flour
140g caster sugar
30g cocoa
½ tsp baking powder
1 egg
¼ tsp vanilla
125ml milk
Fudge pieces (for decoration)
80ml sunflower/vegetable oil

  • Preheat the oven to 160C (fan)/180C
  • Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin
  • Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix until smooth
  • Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 18-20mins until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Keep an eye on it though, it could be ready after 15mins.
  • Place on a wire rack to cool.
 Salted caramel
100ml double cream
1 tsp sea salt
100g caster sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
100g unsalted butter (softened)
100g milk/dark chocolate – I prefer milk as it’s less rich but dark works just as well.
30ml water

  • In a deep, heavy bottomed pan add the water, sugar and golden syrup. Stir until combined and then boil over a medium heat until the temperature reaches 170C on a sugar thermometer.
 
  • Once it reaches that temp take it off the heat immediately. Don't just turn off the ring, put the pan on an unused ring on the cooker.
  • While that pan is boiling away gently heat the cream until its warm but not bubbling.
  • Once the sugar mix has reached 170 pour the cream into the pan but take care as it is VERY hot and will bubble up for a few seconds. Keep stirring until it’s all combined and you will have a yummy looking but very hot pan of caramel.
  • Now pour all the mixture into a measuring jug and then pour half of that back into the pan. Add the chocolate into the mix in the pan and stir until the chocolate melts.
 
  • If you have a mixer pour this into the bowl, start whisking on a low speed and add the butter to it.
  • Turn up the speed and keep mixing until the bowl is cool to the touch. This can take about 5mins but don't leave it unattended incase your mixer decides to move across the counter.
  • If you don't have a mixer you will need to do all of this with an electric whisk, it will take longer and cause some arm ache!
  • While the mixer is doing its thing go back to the leftover jug of caramel and add the salt to it and give it a mix.
  • Leave in on the side to cool and once cool add more salt a wee bit at a time if you find you would like it saltier. Remember you can always add but not take away!
  • Once the bowl of the chocolate caramel ganache is cool to the touch pop it in the fridge for about 30mins.
  • After 30mins the caramel ganache out of the fridge and give it a quick whisk. Don't leave it in there any more that 30mins or it will go too hard.
  • Trim to top off the cake so it is level then divide into a 5x5 grid using a sharp knife and a ruler. I used the width of the ruler to give me the size of the petite fours but you can make them any size you want.
  • Slice each cake in half and sandwich together with some salted caramel
  • Pipe a small amount of the chocolate caramel ganache on to each cake and place a small piece of fudge on top to finish with a drizzle of melted white chocolate.
 
 
And that’s it – very easy. I found these far too moreish and ended up eating way more than I should have oops! 
 
I have linked this post up over on the Bakers Anonymous page.




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