hannah turns 17... so, let's look at her sweet 16 cake first!

One of my favorite things is baking special cakes for the kids' friends. H and all her friends turned sweet 16 last year, and for those with early enough birthdays, they got to have actual parties before we went into lockdown. Hannah has one of the first birthdays, and we celebrated her 16th last December with a super fun party with delicious food, gold/pink/black accents, and a ton of kids and loud music. I was asked to make her a cake, and I was given a lot of flexibility about the look of it - so I just wanted it to match the color scheme and be elegant and beautiful. Hannah loves caramel and dulce de leche flavors, so, after some experimentation, I chose a brown butter layer cake with dulce de leche frosting. It was really delicious and rich! I decorated the cake with glossy meringue flowers and kisses in white and pinks.

The recipe for the brown butter layer cake is from Food and Wine. It has a ton of butter as well as eggs, egg yolks, and milk, which is what makes it so rich and tasty. I love the nuttiness of the brown butter as well as the little black flecks you get distributed through the cake. The recipe makes a 9" layer cake or a single layer of a 12" cake, which is what we used for this big party. It was originally shown filled with chocolate mousse and topped with a light chocolate buttercream, but it paired really nicely with both dulce de leche and caramel frosting. 

As far as the frosting goes, I'm not sure where I found the recipe, but it was essentially a simple buttercream to which you mix in 3/4 cup of dulce de leche. It occurred to me that it might taste good with caramel instead, so I made some sample cake tests for the kids to vote on. Interestingly, I preferred the taste of the caramel frosting on its own, but the dulce de leche frosting paired better with the cake! I quickly became an expert in making homemade dulce de leche in a pie plate partially submerged in a pan of water and baked for about an hour and a half (instructions below). It's very easy, but it does take a bit of prep time to get the dulce de leche ready and cool before you can make the frosting.

Here's how to make the cake and frosting:

Brown Butter Layer Cake 

(makes 1 9” cake or 1 12” layer)

3 sticks unsalted butter (12 ounces), plus more for greasing the pans

2 1/4 cups (9 5/8 ounces) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting 

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 2/3 cups (11 5/8 - 11 3/4 ounces) sugar

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped

3 large egg yolks

2 large eggs

1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) milk, at room temperature

Preheat oven to 325°. Butter two 9-inch cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Butter the paper and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until foamy, about 5 minutes. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the milk solids turn brown and the butter smells nutty, about 4 minutes longer. Scrape the melted butter and browned bits into a large heatproof bowl. Set the bowl in an ice water bath until the butter begins to set around the edge, about 8 minutes.

While the butter cools, in a medium bowl, whisk the 2  1/4 cups of all-purpose flour with baking powder and salt.

Remove the bowl of butter from the ice water and scrape up the hardened butter. Transfer the butter to the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the paddle and beat until creamy. Add the sugar and vanilla seeds and beat at medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg yolks, then whole eggs. Beat in dry ingredients and milk in 3 alternating additions, scraping down the side and bottom of the bowl as necessary.

Pour cake batter into prepared pans and bake in the center of the oven for about 40 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking, until the cakes are golden and a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean. Cool cakes in the pans for 20 minutes, then invert them onto a rack to let them cool completely. Peel off the parchment paper.

Set one cake layer on a platter. Spread with mousse or frosting and cover with the second cake layer. Crumb coat with a thin layer of buttercream and refrigerate until set, about 5 minutes. Frost with the remaining buttercream. The cake is best eaten at room temperature but benefits from a quick chill in the fridge to firm up the frosting. If you're not eating it right away, I recommend storing it in the fridge and then letting it sit out for 30-60 minutes before serving.

 

Dulce De Leche Frosting

(To fill and frost a 12" cake, I made 2 1/2 batches of frosting. This amount should frost a standard 9" cake.)

1 1/2 cups softened butter (3 sticks)

5 cups (20 ounces) powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 cup dulce de leche

3 tablespoons heavy cream

Cream the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer until smooth. Slowly mix in the powdered sugar, starting the mixer on low and increase speed as it incorporates. Mix in the salt and vanilla extract, followed by the dulce de leche. Once everything is fully incorporated, add the heavy cream, one tablespoon at a time to achieve the desired thickness.

How to Make Dulce de Leche (Oven Method)
Heat oven to 425°F with rack in middle. Pour the contents of 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk into a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate and cover tightly with foil. Set plate in a roasting pan and add enough hot water to pan to reach halfway up pie plate. Bake milk in middle of oven 45 minutes. Check water level and add additional, if necessary, then continue to bake 45 minutes more, or until milk is thick and brown. Remove pie plate from water bath and cool, uncovered. Makes about 1 1/4 cups.

Meringue decorations

The meringues were just a standard vanilla meringue recipe (here are two different  recipes - just eliminate the chocolate!) that I tinted and piped into various flower and leaf and kiss shapes. The meringue mixture was a bit soft, so although they held a defined shape, they probably could have used to be whipped a bit more! I made several dozen meringues, not exactly knowing how I was going to use them. I'm always drawn to the "double barrel" cakes that are very tall and have cascading designs down the side, but I rarely end up making cakes that tall. I thought they came out pretty on Hannah's cake, and I liked the mixture of different shapes and colors of flowers together.