Caramel cake frosting recipe condensed milk

Check out my birthday cake! It may not appear very festive, but it definitely brightened the day because it was topped with caramel icing made from scratch.

Caramel icing on yellow or white cake is a Southern classic, but I’d never heard of it until I was in my thirties and saw it in a Cake Mix Doctor book. That caramel icing recipe included confectioners’ sugar and brown sugar and set up like a praline after you poured it over the cake. I was proud of myself for mastering the quick version of caramel icing, but I soon learned that real Southern caramel icing was made with granulated and/or brown sugar and cooked over the stove using a candy thermometer. The version I’d been making was the “cheat” version, so I vowed to seek down something more authentic.

Yesterday I had some extra time for baking and decided to try a new yellow cake with caramel icing recipe. Since I didn’t have a Southern grandma around to tell me how to do it, I just used a Southern Living version found via Food.com. The yellow cake was fantastic. As for the caramel icing, it was unusual in that it contained granulated sugar and an egg, whereas most of the other versions called for brown sugar and evaporated milk. Maybe the egg is what made it easier to work with because it didn’t harden as fast as the confectioners’ sugar based icing and didn’t crack quite so much, either. We loved it, but now that I’ve studied up on caramel cake, I want to try some of the other versions made with with brown sugar and evaporated milk. As for the cake, I’m sticking with this this one, though I’ve seen another popular version that calls for self-rising flour.

Update: I recently found another one very similar to this but with slightly less sugar. I haven’t tried it yet, but Kathryn Stockett, author of the help, says this is Minnie’s Caramel Cake recipe.

Caramel Cake

A scratch yellow cake made with sour cream and topped with a caramel frosting

Author: Cookie Madness

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Serves: 10

Ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups( 12.4 ounces) aerated and stirred all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 cup room temperature sour cream

Frosting

• 3 cups sugar, divided
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup whole milk, room temp
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract