Chris Makes Molten Caramel Cake

Definitely not the same day that we shot

gluten-free carrot cake 'cause I have

a different shirt on so you know its a different day.

But everything else Everything else

Yeah, I don't know who that is

I love the idea of a molten chocolate cake

and wanted to do the same thing but with caramel.

The only thing was it took a little bit of work

to get there but I think what's awesome

about this recipe is that, actually

It's just a very simple cake that's very easy to make

that just happens to have a liquid center

of hot caramel inside of it.

The first step is, for your center

taking a quarter cup of dulce de leche

which let me just in fairness,

I started out making my own caramel,

it was delicious, it worked, it was fine

but you know what you can get like

something very close to what I was making

out of a jar and a lot of it is frankly delicious

and just you know ready to go awesome.

So this is dulce de leche and its going both,

in the center of this cake and going

in the cake batter itself. So in order

to get that liquid center when the cake is hot

and you know the crumb of the cake is fully set

you know around that center, dulce de leche

I'm adding some butter to it and the reason is

at you know that hot temperature, it's gonna mean

that it's extra fluid. If you put this in the freezer

you know mixed in with the butter

for at least half an hour, the butter is

gonna freeze really solid and even though

it's still gonna be a little bit like tacky

'cause there's so much sugar in this,

that's gonna mean that as the cake cooks

up around the filling, the filling's

gonna sort of drop down into the cake

and stay fluid and gonna be like gonna really wanna run

when you cut into the cake, so hopefully

we're gonna see that happen, I'll bet five bucks on it.

I've got butter I'm gonna work into the dulce

and that's gonna go into the freezer.

It needs to be room temperature right now

just softened, you could soften it

in the microwave a little bit just for the sake

of being able to work into the dulce easily.

It's not so much that you want to taste butter

in the center of the cake, it's that you are relying on

the ability, like the fat content of the butter

to want to freeze pretty solid, you know

when it's very cold and then also be very fluid

when its hot. Claire and I actually,

I went through a lot of development agita

over this one, you know trying to figure out

how to achieve this because with chocolate

you have with a molten chocolate cake

you have very different properties

coming from the chocolate itself,

this was trying to figure out how

you can achieve the same thing

but without any of those sort of properties

that you, you know, you kind of rely on

in a molten chocolate cake setting, so

I'm gonna do four blobs about equal size for this filling.

Let's get this in the freezer.

Cool, so we're gonna leave that alone

for about half an hour while we make the cake.

Let's prepare our ramikens, so these are kind of,

probably like an eight ounce ramiken,

we're only gonna go to about like the lip,

you know the sort of that inside little rim.

I'm just gonna butter and sugar these

just so that the cakes wanna kind unmould

and slide out very easily. Should I do,

you know I guess ill do a brush.

So yeah again room temperature butter

is your friend here, you don't need a brush for this

you could just use your hands.

I'd get like a lot of like comments

if I had just like my greasy mitts all up in there.

Do some sugar. We had a recipe kind of ideas meeting

that was based solely on recipe names

and molten caramel cake was just like,

one of those things that I didn't really see out there

and it just sounded like something

I could really like get down with, you know,

that other people would be into.

Like the whole notion of a self saucing pudding

you know, like a dessert where you get a thing

but you get like a sauce already built into the thing,

like that to me is very compelling.

Let me mix together my dry ingredients here,

I've got flour, baking powder,

and salt, it's a good bit of salt

just 'cause that dolce is, you know fairly sweet.

Just gonna whisk this so ready to go when I need it.

Alright, and then the cake itself

is like pretty standard, you know,

we're gonna cream together some, room temp butter

and sugar...

start to get that nice and airy,

create good structure and then

I'm gonna work the dulce into that along with eggs.

So we're kinda getting there, just looking

for it to be kinda light, get that fluffy texture,

It's just gonna help create like a good like

airy crumb to the cake.

Alright, so now I'm gonna work the dulce in.

We probably need to get Gaby to pronounce

it properly at some point.

Yeah, well you know it's like

you want caramel in the cake as well as in the filling,

otherwise it's just kind of a very blonde cake.

So that was kinda like the key to kinda

working this thing out, I hope

you don't feel cheated that I'm not making my own caramel

but, honestly like it's better this way,

it's like very predictable it takes like,

so much less time and you can't really start

with like a hot caramel because part of it

has to go in the freezer anyway.

So I'm just gonna work eggs into this.

The batter's gonna look a little bit

grainy and separated and it's totally cool,

it just has to do with the ratio of like fat

and liquid that's in there from all that egg,

'cause we're not making a big volume.

Alright and then we're gonna do vanilla.

We're gonna have to scare up somebody to taste these things.

So, batter's fine, everything's cool.

Gaby, will you pronounce dulce de leche for us?

'Cause I feel like Argentinians pronounce it dul-say

Dul-say

Dulce, yeah, but like I can't say it like that

I can do Rick's accent, dul-saay,

but no it's dulce de leche, yeah

Yeah

We call dulce anything that's sweet

like preserves or jam. Oh yeah

Yeah, [speaking spanish]

[Chris] And it doesn't have to do

with the fact that its sweet?

Yes, oh no definitely yes

dulce is anything that you spread on toast,

like jam or preserves. Anyway,

class is over, bye. Cool, thanks gab

So here's the deal, so we're gonna

put the filling on top of each one of these

and its gonna just kind of sit on the top.

While the cake bakes the filling's

gonna kinda drop down into the center of the cake

and hopefully not go all the way through the cake.

Now, I just wanna have the filling be cradled slightly

with like a little kind of divot, if you will.

So just like a little like landing pad,

doesn't have to be perfect or exact.

So you can freeze the filling directly on metal,

parchment isn't a great idea because

it's just gonna get super sticky, so

honestly you know, I'm using a silpat

just cause nominally a little bit easier to clean.

These have been frozen for a while,

as you can see this has been in the freezer

for a long time but it's still fairly tacky

just 'cause of that sugar content.

So I'm just gonna scrape this onto my divot.

Just like that, I'm not gonna really press it

[Brad] down into it to much Lobster my ass!

Hey, hey, hey, it's a family show dude

Damn right it is, oh Morocco what you doin' bud?

Molten caramel cake.

Yeah you are

Ooh, could you do your Macho Man Randy Savage impression,

real quick Whoa, whoa, whoa

[Chris] In front of these guys? Yeah

No, no they're not ready, I told them all about it,

Chris we're not there yet. I told them all about it.

We're not there yet.

Dude, I promised them a show

That's on you pal.

Brad.

It is pretty damn good.

Oh it is pretty good, it's fine

we'll just wait next video man.

[Brad] Yeah, people love a good anticipation,

Alright, so these are gonna go into

three fifty oven yeah? Alright three fifty oven.

Okay.

Cool we're taking it back to the oven here,

so, we've got a little bit of the filling

kind of erupted a little bit, but that's fine,

honestly it's a good sign, the cake itself

you gotta be careful this is very hot.

The cake itself is set, little bit browning

around the sides there, I think we're good.

As long as the caramel is more or less encased,

it's not really gonna, I mean the cake itself

can be overbaked but there's not a moment

at which, a molten center becomes

a non-molten center, like there is with like

molten chocolate cake does that make sense?

Once this filling is molten and hot,

like it's not gonna start to set

until it actually just like completely cools,

so we're kinda good to go, in terms of

unmoulding one of these bad boys

and seeing what's happening here.

Gonna loosen from around the sides,

again, molten caramel is hot in case that's not obvious.

[timer bleeps]

Oh, great,

The cakes are ready. Cakes are done.

The filling as you can see even though it looks like oh,

it all kind of erupted out of the top,

you know, it did and it didn't

because what happens actually is there's

a lot of filling relative to the amount of cake,

so a lot of it actually drops down into the cake,

but what I'm loving about what's happening here

is that I just see that little beady eye

of the caramel kind of staring back at me

and I know that there's a good bit

that's encased in there, when I give it a poke

I can see that there's a good bit of like, fluidity to it.

Huh, stay on target [laughing]

[Chris] Ooh Excellent

[Chris] So like here is the idea

of the self saucing pudding, made,

brought to life, where you have that molten center

kind of dropping down into the bottom of the plate.

You can see where it was kind of encased in there,

had like a little caramel home,

and we just set it free.

Cool, well, cake waits for nobody

and I think we're gonna call Tommy to the front here.

I can't do this, I need to do this for you guys

not for the camera, the camera already got one

this one's for you.

Yay Oh yeah

A river runs through it.

It does, certainly runs through this cake.

Careful it might be a little hot

[Gaby] Yeah.

[Tommy] Oh so that's why I'm going first.

You're our early warning system

I kind of knew it, I'm gonna go in the middle

How is it?

It's really good.

I know right.

Oh my god, I love this.

This is so good.

I like it.

[Chris] I just like that its a very simple cake

but it does a pretty heavy lift.

And it's just a super fun easy dessert,

impress your friends, and yeah,

pretty friggin' delicious, Cake time!

Oh it's so warm.

We're down to spoons.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for coming down.

Yeah, this is so good.

It's always good but this is like, really good.

I'm gonna go eat all this, thank you.

Thanks.

Alright, we have like one left,

look this is the first on I cut into

but it's still perfectly good, and there's

a little bit of butter and then sugar

inside of that ramiken just so you

get a very clean release, you know.

So you get a little bit of crunch,

a little bit of texture, if you really wanted even more

you could use sugar in the raw or something.

Oh my god yeah, I'm gonna eat this whole thing

Oh yeah, yeah

It's been lovely thank you so much,

I need a private room, so I'm gonna go.

[laughs]

Alright, cool well that's it, we're done.

Cakes are gone, we sold 'em, that's all that's left.

Super easy, delicious, and definitely

pulled together this Friday afternoon, so, done.

So, first step.

Is this like a step up from like a mug cake or-?

[Interrupts] Whoa, whoa, whoa Tommy,

a step up from a mug cake?

To me this is like still like real baking, you know

and not like gimmicky in the same way.

I mean mug cakes, obviously it was invented

by Albert Adrià right? But I feel like

what it became was something far more sinister

in how that played out.

[Tommy] It's like going from couture to Zara.

Yeah [laughs] Or like Forever 21.

[Tommy] Yeah, even worse, mug cake I think is forever 21.