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Salted Caramel Cashew Cake

L. loves cakes with nuts, but there's only so many varieties of hazelnut and almond cakes one can do. I've done pistachios once, and we figured this year was going to be about cashews. There are surprisingly few recipes like this one on the web, and I did combine ideas from multiple recipes.

Here goes:

For the cake layers, I doubled the batch size from this recipe, and made some adjustments:

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/caramel-cashew-cupcake-2282157

I reduced the sugar, doubled the cashews, substituted cake flour and buttermilk, and skipped the orange zest. I started with 1 cup of milk, added the juice of half a lime, and set it aside for 10 mins or so. In a 350 over, roasted 1 cup of cashew pieces till golden brown. Once cool, roughly chopped them. To the milk, add 1 cup of oil, four eggs and 1 tsp vanilla to the mix. In a bowl, add 2 1/4 cups of AP flour + 1/4 cup of corn starch, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 21/2 tsp baking powder. Mix everything, add the wet ingredients, and the roasted cashews, divide into 2 9" prepared cake pans and bake at 350 for about 30 mins. Cool on the rack.

For the frosting, here's the basic recipe I followed:
https://www.craftybaking.com/recipe/caramel-swiss-meringue-buttercream-tutorial

I did make more caramel (used some of it to make cashew brittles for the decoration), and extra sauce for drizzling on the cake).

1/4 cup water, 2 cups sugar. Once caramelized, use some for the cashew brittles (plain chopped cashews and pour on a Silpat). For the remaining, added about 11/4 cups heavy cream. Stirred until it all mixed and let cool.

For the butter cream, 7 eggwhites and 1/2 cup sugar over ban-marrie until sugar dissolves. Then beat using kitchen aid, and add 4 sticks of room temperature butter, 2 tbsp at a time.  Add caramel sauce and vanilla.

I actually had serious trouble with swiss meringue butter cream. The meringue separated, so I had to drain out the water, and add powdered sugar to get the right consistency. Luckily, it all worked out.

The frosting was enough for four layers, and some piping. I also used caramel for drizzling, and the cashew brittle for decorations. Served with extra sauce, and it turned out to be really really good. 

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