Southern Caramel Cake Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is caramel cake made of? ›

Caramel Cake Ingredients

We use it here, in addition to milk, to ensure the cake stands up to the Caramel Frosting. Butter, sugar, and eggs: You'll find these staple cake ingredients in almost every batter. Flour, baking powder, and salt: Ditto these dry ingredients.

The Duncan Hines Caramel Cake Mix is AWESOME as a base for cakes.

This style of frosting is called penuche, and it starts with a very simple caramel made of brown sugar, butter, and cream or milk. Then a few extra ingredients turn it into a lusciously rich frosting with warm notes that are perfect for autumn.

Fill a large saucepan with water and bring to a boil over medium heat. Place can of condensed milk, unopened, in the boiling water. Cover and let simmer for 3 hours, refilling water as needed and turning the can every half hour to prevent scorching. Carefully open can and serve.

I'm a pro baker who made devil's food cake with Pillsbury, Duncan Hines, and Betty Crocker mixes. The Duncan Hines version was moist and had the strongest chocolate flavor of the three. Betty Crocker's cake was also moist but lacked flavor and tasted bland without frosting.

But what is butterscotch, exactly? Whereas caramel is made by cooking white sugar until it melts, darkens, and breaks down into its component parts, which in turn react with each other to create complex aromas, butterscotch is built on brown sugar, which gives it a couple of advantages.

Butterscotch vs Caramel

The difference between butterscotch and caramel is that caramel is made with white granulated sugar and cooked to 340 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas butterscotch is made with brown sugar and cooked to 289 degrees Fahrenheit.

The process of caramelization consists of heating sugar slowly to around 170 °C (340 °F). As the sugar heats, the molecules break down and re-form into compounds with a characteristic colour and flavour.

Caramel is made by heating sugar (either with a liquid or by itself, more on that below!) in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until it melts and becomes clear. The liquefied sugar is then cooked, without stirring, until it darkens in color, taking on additional flavor notes the longer it remains on the heat.

Most of the time, people cook caramel by heating up regular or brown sugar until it turns into a smooth and creamy substance. However, you can also make caramel out of sweetened condensed milk, creating the same great sauce with a unique, extra-sweet kick.

Is caramel made from butter and sugar? ›

Ok you may not have known this but, ~newsflash~ caramel is literally just cooked sugar with a little bit of butter (for stability) and heavy cream (for flavor & mouthfeel) stirred in at the end. The longest (and “hardest”) part of making caramel is just toasting and melting down the sugar at the very beginning.