Chocolate Dulce de Leche Cake

Chocolate Dulce de Leche Cake - made November 4, 2018 from I Wash You Dry

This is a surprisingly good cake. I say surprisingly because its base is a cake mix and you know how I feel about those. But, like all doctored cake mix recipes, this adds enough extra ingredients to mask that box-cake-mix taste. The texture of the cake was not quite as firm as a pound cake but not squishy like a chiffon. The taste held up as well.

The recipe makes a bit too much of each frosting but the frostings were pretty tasty. I made the same mistake I always seem to make with layered cakes that need to be frosted. The right way to frost two layers together - especially if there’s a filling that isn’t as firm as the frosting, like the dulce de leche in this recipe – is to pipe a line of frosting at the outer edge of one of the cake layers. Spread the filling evenly in the middle but inside the piped frosting line. Then sandwich the top layer over the bottom layer. The piped circle of frosting keeps the layers from sliding against each other and the filling from oozing out while you’re trying to frost the cake.

I know that’s what I should’ve done but I didn’t remember to do it until I was dealing with the difficulty of the layers sliding tipsily against each other when I was trying to frost the outside. Sigh. #fail.

As a result, my cake ended up a bit lopsided and the top layer threatened to slide off the bottom layer out of spite whenever my back was turned. Cutting it so the two layers didn’t separate was – haha – no piece of cake either. What can I say, I’m not about the fancy looks, but about the taste. And fortunately this tasted pretty good. I used a dulce de leche that my niece brought me back from Hawaii so you know it was the good stuff. But the dulce de leche frosting didn’t have a strong taste. I think the sugar overwhelmed the dulce de leche itself. 

An individual-size version of the cake

And like I said earlier, the frosting recipes made a little too much frosting for a non-frosting user like me so you may want to do a 2/3 recipe for the chocolate frosting and a half recipe for the dulce de leche frosting. Unless you plan to decorate a lot with the dulce de leche frosting or really slather on the chocolate frosting. But overall, thumbs up on this cake.

Cake
1 (15.25-ounce) Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix
1 (3.9-ounce) box instant chocolate pudding
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
4 ounces cream cheese
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder

Dulce de Leche Cream Cheese Frosting
4 ounces cream cheese, cold
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
4-5 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup thick dulce de leche

Topping and filling
3/4 cup thick dulce de leche, divided
1/4 cup toffee bits

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two 9-inch round cake pans and sprinkle each pan with 1 tablespoon flour, shaking to coat evenly.
2. Combine cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, milk, sour cream, oil and vanilla and beat together for one minute. Do not overbeat.
3. Divide batter evenly between prepared cake pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until toothpick inserted near the middle comes out clean. Let cool completely and refrigerate for 2 hours before frosting.
4. Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting: Cream butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy; add in vanilla. Whisk together cocoa powder and powdered sugar and add, 1/2 cup at a time, to mixture, mixing in gently until fully incorporated.
5. Dulce de Leche Cream Cheese Frosting: Cream butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy; add in vanilla. Add the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, mixing between each addition then beat in 1/2 cup dulce de leche until fully combined.
6. Assemble the cake: Once the cakes are chilled, frost the top of one cake with a layer of the dulce de leche frosting. Spread the other cake top with 1/2 cup of dulce de leche caramel and layer the cakes together so that the caramel and frosting are together between the cakes.
7. Frost the outside and top of entire layered cake with chocolate frosting. Decorate with dulce de leche frosting. Drizzle top of cake with dulce de leche caramel and sprinkle with toffee bits.