Chocolate Buttermilk Cake with Vanilla Butter Cream Icing & Salted Caramel Sauce

Have I mentioned that I love my new kitchen?  Well... I do!  I decided to give the oven a workout over the long weekend because I have so missed being able to bake, not having a functional oven in months.  I'm sure it also has something to do with the fact that I am a crazy hungry pregnant woman who is craving sweet like nothing else as well.

I saw a recipe for a delicious looking chocolate cake with a twist on the Raspberri Cupcakes blog which I just couldn't resist.  Although the earl grey icing didn't really appeal to me the cake and the salted caramel sauce was just calling my name.

It's a relatively easy recipe to follow.  Instead of the earl grey icing I just used a standard buttercream icing recipe that I always use (I don't even measure it these days) with some vanilla bean paste for extra flavour.  

I then made the salted caramel sauce to drizzle on top and it is to die for.  The recipe on Raspberri Cupcakes says to only make half the quantity for the cake (which would be more then enough) but I didn't halve it and subsequently have bottles of it left over in my fridge.  Lucky it tastes delicious!  It's just like liquid Coloumbine lollies (an old time favourite of mine).  We've been having left over caramel on just about everything - fruit, ice cream, I even made hot milk with a spoonful in.  It's really that good...

The cake was absolutely delicious and nice and moist. The icing and the caramel sauce made it even better.  We took it to Tim's family's house for lunch on saturday and the whole thing almost went in one go!  Definitely a recipe to keep.