Dulce de leche cake

A friend of mine from way back my university days (whom I haven't seen in like 13 years!) was in town with her son this past week. We invited them over for lunch today before they headed back to Brisbane.  I know I said I would be resting from baking for a bit but then I wanted to prepare something quite special for them.

I searched the net for cake ideas and this kind of cake caught my fancy.  I've not made dulce de leche ever before but since I had sweetened condensed milk in my pantry anyway and it seemed easy to follow the instructions on how to make one, I decided to give it a go.  My son was teasing me, saying I was out to impress my friend.  If I had really wanted to impress her, I would have stuck to a cake I was already used to making, but I was actually setting myself up for failure here by experimenting on a new thing.  In the end, the risk was all worth it.

Here's my version of the Dulce de Leche Cake....layers of chiffon cake, filled with creamy custard, frosted with dulce de leche swiss meringue buttercream, sides covered with toasted cake crumbs, topped with dulce de leche and chocolate clusters...



Too many components in this cake, you reckon?  Next time I just might omit some of them, like maybe the custard filling.  My custard was actually a little runny and some of it absorbed into the cake. 

But let me just say that the dulce de leche was fantastic!  And adding a mere half a cup of that stuff to the Swiss meringue buttercream did wonders to the frosting.  Nothing like I've ever tasted before. Certainly a good result for a first try.

Have a great weekend!