Burnt Caramel Buttercream

caramel buttercream frosting in a blue bowl with the mixer bowl and whisk in the background

This burnt caramel buttercream frosting is perfect on stout cake. Perfect. Its perfection depends upon ridiculously dark caramel--the reddish-mahogany color of strong sweet tea is what you're going for, and on using enough salt to perfectly balance and deepen the flavor.

This recipe makes enough icing to generously frost the top and sides of 1 9" cake layer PLUS you'll have about 1 cup or so leftover.

Feel free to torte the cake and use some as filling if you want. This recipe involves many Balls in the Air. You have to caramelize sugar, bring corn syrup and sugar to a rolling boil, and whip yolks simultaneously. Maybe you should make it with a friend.

Course Icings, Frostings and Fillings

Cuisine French

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 15

Total Time 35

Servings cups

Calories 466kcal

Author Jennifer Field

Equipment

Ingredients

4 ounces egg yolks 7-8
5.5 oz granulated sugar
5.5 oz light corn syrup
1 pound butter 4 sticks, cool but soft, cut into 1 tablespoon pieces
¾ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon espresso powder optional but awesome

Instructions

Have a bowl of ice water ready, large enough to dip the pan you caramelize the sugar in. Set aside.
Place yolks and the salt in your mixer bowl fitted with the whip attachment.
Beat the yolks and salt on medium speed.
In a small saucepan bring corn syrup to a full rolling boil, and then slowly stream it into your beating yolks. Pour it slowly right down the inside of the bowl. Try to keep it off the whisk so it ends up in the icing, not on the sides of your bowl. Increase speed to high.
Heat sugar and about 1/4 cup of water to a boil, stirring to dissolve all the sugar.
Bring it up to a boil, slap on the lid and let the steam wash any sugar crystals off the side of the pan.
Remove the lid and turn the heat to high. Once the sugar starts to color, you can swirl the pan to keep the color even.
When the sugar is very light amber, turn the heat down to medium. At this point, you can stir the caramel with a wooden spoon (most of the crystals have broken down sufficiently that they won't recrystallize). Take the sugar to a dark caramel. It will start to smoke a little and your eyes will sting. That's how you know it's done.
Take the pan off the stove and briefly (no more than 3 seconds or so) dunk the bottom of the pan into ice water. This should cool things off enough to keep your sugar from continuing to cook while you're doing the next step.
Once you've dunked your pan, slowly pour the caramel into the still-beating yolk/corn syrup mixture. Pour it in a thin stream right down the inner surface of the bowl so you don't sling it all over the sides of your pan. Whip until just about body temperature.
Add in the cool butter, a bit at a time, along with the optional espresso powder.
Beat until light and fluffy.
This frosting is enough to generously frost the top and sides of a 9" chocolate stout cake with about 1 cup leftover. You can also choose to torte, fill and frost your cake, in which case you'll probably use all the frosting.

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