Caramel Cake with Caramel Icing Recipe

Have you ever made a Caramel Cake with Caramel Icing recipe? It’s a classic Southern treat! But instead of a layer cake, I made it into a thin sheet cake. Less time baking, more time eating, I say! It’s really easy to put together. Originally posted August 1, 2018.

The other day I walked into the kitchen to find my 1-year-old baby Valentine standing on a chair by the kitchen counter, eating an entire stick of BUTTER. Such are the risks of softening butter on the counter in this house.

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I snapped this picture literally minutes after I had finished giving her a bath to clean up her adventures in the toilet. She rewarded me with butter hair. These kids! It’s a good thing she’s so cute.

Caramel Cake…sheet cake?

I’ve been a little obsessed with sheet cake lately. I posted the recipe for The Only Texas Sheet Cake You’ll Ever Need just a few weeks ago, after testing it 3 times. And then I moved straight into the caramel version. (Side note, do you pronounce it car-mel, or care-uh-mel? I grew up saying car-mel, but in the past few years for some reason switched to care-uh-mel, and now I feel like a pretentious food snob every time I say it. The truth comes out!!)

Southern Caramel Cake wannabe

What I really wanted was Caramel Cake, the Southern kind with layers, but without all the fuss of actual, well, layers. The cake part of a traditional Southern Caramel Cake is not actually caramel-flavored; it’s a yellow or white cake that’s there to soak up all the caramel icing goodness. The cake part of today’s recipe, though, actually tastes caramel-y because we’re using 2 cups of brown sugar. And we’re throwing it into a sheet pan to bake so that it’s done in 20 minutes!

Caramel Cake Ingredients

Here is everything you need. So easy!

How To Make Caramel Cake

This cake recipe is soooo simple. Kind of the opposite of real Caramel Cake, ha. Here’s a basic overview and I’ll give you some more details and photos below!

1. Melt butter and water in a pot, add a heck ton of brown sugar, then vanilla.
2. Add flour, salt, and baking soda.
3. Whisk together the eggs and sour cream separately then add to the batter.
4. Bake 20 minutes! That’s it!

What size pan should I use to bake caramel sheet cake?

How To Make Caramel Frosting

And now for the icing. Legit, from scratch, pour-straight-up-dry-sugar-into-a-pan caramel icing takes like an hour to make, stirring a pot the whole time. Noooo thank you. I’m all about the brown sugar shortcuts. Bless you, brown sugar. Here’s a quick overview!

1. Boil together butter, brown sugar, and evaporated milk.
2. Add vanilla
3. Place the pan of frosting in an ice bath for a few minutes to help it thicken.
4. Spread over the cake and devour! Make sure you don’t eat it all with a spoon first!!

(This is what your caramel should look like when it’s boiling. It will thicken in just a few minutes.)

Ice bath time. You can see how beautifully thick it is now.

You still get that deep caramel flavor by boiling it on the stove with some butter and evaporated milk, and it only takes a few minutes. Much easier than the dry sugar method.

After boiling, you cool for several minutes in an ice bath to thicken it up. I LOVE this method for cooked frosting, and use it in several recipes, including Nana’s Famous Fudge Brownies and this Peach Cake with Brown Sugar Frosting. It makes the frosting thicken up so nice and smooth. I eat it by the spoonful! (It’s much better than fistfuls of butter.)

Is there a difference between icing and frosting?

Frosting is thick enough to be spreadable. It stays soft on the edges. Imagine the frosting on your favorite Chocolate Cake. Swirly soft for days.

Icing is thin enough to be drizzled on top of a cake, and usually hardens on the edges (like today’s caramel frosting!) It will look crackly when you cut into it, like the icing on this Glazed Lemon Bread. Today’s caramel frosting is kind of like a frosting-icing hybrid.

How To Store Caramel Cake

Store this cake covered on the counter! If you leave it in the pan you baked it in and don’t have a lid for that pan, it’s going to dry out pretty fast, even if you cover with plastic wrap. I like to transfer it to a large rectangular food storage container. Keep it only in one layer if you need the frosting to stay nice for presentation. It also freezes beautifully, if well sealed.

How Long Does Carmel Cake Last?

First you should ask yourself, am I REALLY going to have any leftovers? And then you should probably pop the cake in the freezer, if by some trick of fate the cake has already been out a few days. Frozen cake is good for up to 3 months.

Look at this you guys. Can you see how this literally looks like I’m slicing up a square of soft caramel? It really is caramel, with the added bonus of cake underneath it! It’s so incredibly rich, and so good. A little bit goes a long way. (For some people who are not me.) This cake feeds a crowd and would be a great dessert to bring for game day!

More sheet cakes that you will die and go to heaven for!

More caramel recipes, yes please

Are you a caramel fiend like me? I get it, caramel is definitely a whole mood, and you need recipes to feed that mood. Don’t worry, I gotchu. Here are some of my favorites:

• The Salted Caramel Sauce of my Dreams >> thicker, richer, and more FUDGY than your average caramel
• The Best Homemade Caramel Sauce >> a more classic version of caramel sauce
• Salted Caramel Sandwich Cookies >> the most caramel-y of all caramel cookies with some of that thick and fudgy salted caramel in the first link above in between brown butter cookies!
• Homemade Salted Caramel Brownies >> one of overall favorite desserts. And that’s truly saying something!!
• Soft Caramel Pecan Sticky Buns Recipe >> take cinnamon rolls, and take them to level 1,000. The sticky caramel sauce and toasted pecans are *chef’s kiss*
• Bananas Foster from Grandbaby Cakes

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Caramel Cake with Caramel Icing

4.64 from 49 votes

Prep: 15 minutes mins

Cook: 17 minutes mins

Total: 32 minutes mins

Servings: 20

Have you ever had Caramel Cake with Caramel Icing? It’s a classic Southern treat! But instead of a layer cake, I made this into a thin sheet cake. Less time baking, more time eating, I say! It’s really easy to put together.

Ingredients

For the cake

• ▢ 1 cup salted butter, (2 sticks)
• ▢ 1 cup water
• ▢ 2 cups brown sugar
• ▢ 2 teaspoons vanilla
• ▢ 2 cups flour, spooned and leveled
• ▢ 1/2 teaspoon salt
• ▢ 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ▢ 1/2 cup sour cream
• ▢ 2 large eggs

For the icing

• ▢ 3/4 cup salted butter, (1 and 1/2 sticks)
• ▢ 3 & 1/2 cups brown sugar
• ▢ 1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup evaporated milk OR heavy cream
• ▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt
• ▢ 1 & 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

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Instructions

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 18×13 inch half sheet pan* with parchment paper, or just spray it well with nonstick spray (or grease with butter).
• In a medium saucepan, melt 1 cup butter and 1 cup water over medium high heat. Add 2 cups brown sugar and stir occasionally until it comes to a rolling boil (that means bubbles all the way across the top, not just the edges.)  Remove from heat once it has come to a full boil. 
• Let it cool for a couple minutes, then add 2 teaspoons vanilla. 
• Add 2 cups flour to the pot, but don’t mix yet. Add the salt and baking soda on top of the flour and use a small spoon to stir it into the flour (You don’t want to accidentally get a chunk of salt or soda in your cake, ew). 
• Use a whisk to stir the flour mixture in. Try to get all the lumps out. 
• In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs and sour cream. Add this to the cake batter and stir until incorporated. 
• Pour the cake batter into the prepared pan and spread to the edges.
• Bake at 350 for about 17-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with no batter on it. The edges of the cake will start to pull away from the side of the pan. 
• Let the cake cool for about 20 minutes before frosting.
• Make the caramel icing:

  In a clean saucepan, melt 3/4 cup butter, 3 and 1/2 cups brown sugar, 1/2 cup + 1/3 cup evaporated milk (or heavy cream), and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Bring it to a boil over medium heat. Once it is at a rolling boil, stir constantly, watching for the consistency to thicken – it should coat the back of a spoon. As soon as it does, remove from heat (this may take as little as 3 minutes and as many as 10). Add 1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla and stir. 
• Fill a large bowl with ice water. Place the entire pan of frosting into the ice bath, making sure you don't get any water in the caramel. Stir constantly for 3-5 minutes, making sure to be scraping the edges of the pan. See photos. Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't harden up without you noticing! (Don't walk away. You can read in the comments about a bunch of people who waited too long and their caramel got too hard. Sometimes it takes 3 minutes, sometimes more.)
• While it is still pour-able, pour the icing over the slightly cooled cake and spread to the edges.
• Let the icing set for a few minutes before serving warm. This is really good with vanilla ice cream! It’s so rich, you can cut it into pretty small pieces. (I mean. I don’t. But I have a major sweet tooth.) 

Notes

*I like this cake best in an 18×13 inch pan (makes for a thinner cake) but here are the times for other size pans:

If you are baking this in a 9×13 inch cake pan, bake for 23-25 minutes. If you do a 15×10 jelly roll pan, bake for about 20 minutes. If you bake it in an 18×13 half sheet pan, bake for about 17-20 minutes.

All of these times are going to vary because everyone’s oven is different.

Nutrition

Calories: 452kcal | Carbohydrates: 70g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 19g | Saturated Fat: 12g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 5g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 67mg | Potassium: 147mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 60g | Vitamin A: 585IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 94mg | Iron: 1mg

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Calories: 452

Keyword: Cake, caramel, caramel icing

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