I'm a fan of loaf cakes and I wanted to make something different today, something special without chocolate. Sure, there are tons of recipes from the very basic banana bread to very dressy chocolate loaf cake. But something hit me when I saw this Salted Caramel Loaf Cake from Not Without Salt which is one of my favorite foodsites! The recipe made the caramel sauce from scratch but I had a better idea...why not just open a bottle of caramel sauce? Ok, fine! I cheated!A few months back, my auntie sent me a bottle of Whisky Caramel Sauce. I thought this was sort of a butterscotch sauce but this is actually different. When I popped open the lid and sniffed, oh my goodness! There was this intensely rich and warm caramel toffee scent and a heady whisky punch at the end. It was delicious. I had to mix it a bit because the caramel separated at the bottom. I scooped out 1/2 of this because from the recipe, the caramel from scratch should come to about 1/2 cup in total.
Once the cake was baked, it didn't come out as dark as the one from Not Without Salt. It looked a bit sickly and I was worried. But everything went well after I poured the glaze. And it needed the glaze! It just doesn't taste right without it. Trust me. This is one of those cakes that is not complete without it.The end result was a proper loaf cake. It was a luscious caramel flavor and there's nothing feeble about the texture of the cake. It's not pretending to be a cake, it's an honest to goodness dressy cake, meant to satisfy your tastebuds.
Here's the rest of the ingredients.
Salted Whisky Caramel Date Loaf Cake
Adapted from Not Without Salt
For the cake:
1/2 cup whisky caramel sauce (or any store bought caramel sauce)6 tablespoons butter, chopped
1 cup hot water
1 cup pitted and chopped dates
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
For the glaze:
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter
Steps:
Preheat the oven to 175C and prepare a 9x5 loaf pan. I greased mine with butter and lined with baking paper. To make the cake, place caramel sauce, butter, dates and hot water together in a bowl. Mix until the butter is melted. Add the dry ingredients - flour, baking soda and salt into the wet mixture and mix until just combined. Add the egg and vanilla extract. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes. Mine took about 50 minutes.
While the cake is still warm, make the glaze. Place the butter and brown sugar in a bowl on medium heat until melted. Pour in the cream and mix well. Poke some holes on top of the cake and pour the glaze on top. Cool the cake for 10 minutes before pulling it out of the pan to cool on a wire rack. Sprinkle some crunchy sea salt on top. I used Maldon sea salt.
The cake is better the next day. Yum!
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