Happy Cinco de Mayo! I was looking back at some of my recent previous bake recipes and realized that I never made anything for May fifth. As an Los Angeleno for almost a decade I am way past due for a Mexican inspired treat to celebrate today. We are all familiar with churros, fried ice cream and flan but I wanted to do something different with my kind of razzle dazzle in the recipe.
Last year I made some Dulce de Leche Bars for a spring afternoon tea. Dulce de leche is a popular type of caramel used in Latin dishes. I will admit that I used store bought dulce de leche in my recipe that I made last year out of convenience (pun intended). This year I decided that I wanted to make my own homemade dulce de leche. What better day to celebrate homemade canned caramel than Cinco de Mayo.
I had some extra buttermilk in my refrigerator after making my favorite red velvet cake and I wanted to put it to use. I thought the best utilization of both my homemade dulce de leche and buttermilk would be a scrumptious fresh pound cake. This simple yet indulgent cake came out just as I planned, perfect! The tangy buttermilk balanced well with the sweet caramel and the pound cake was not too heavy or too sweet. I added a little festive flavor to this cake by topping it with dulce de leche cookies covered in Kaleidoscope Sprinkle Cosmic Shimmers.
I decided to share this simply satisfying cake with you to make the next time you decide to celebrate Cinco de Mayo or just want some really good cake.
See the complete video and recipe below.
How do I make dulce de leche?
The best way I have found to make dulce de leche is on the stove top.
Remove labels from sweetened condensed milk cans. (Cook 2-3 cans at a time for more caramel).
Place cans into a large saucepan or dutch oven and cover with 1-2 inches of water.
Cover, turn heat on medium/high and allow water to boil, turn heat down to simmer and allow milk to cook for 4-4.5 hours.
Remove cans from heat and allow to cool completely
Tada you now have dulce de leche just like that!
Dulce de Leche Buttermilk Pound Cake
Ingredients:
3 cups of all purpose flour
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1 ½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 ½ cups granulated sugar
5 large eggs, room temperature
2 cups buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2- 8 oz. can homemade dulce de leche, room temperature.
dulce de leche cookies, for decoration (optional)
Kaleidoscope Sprinkle Cosmic Shimmers, for decoration (optional)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F.
Prepare bundt pan by greasing and flouring thoroughly.
In a medium size bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt together until combined. Set aside.
Using an electric or hand mixer, on medium speed beat butter and sugar together until creamed and doubled in size, approximately 5 minutes. (Butter should be pale yellow and sugar almost dissolved).
Turn down speed to low/ medium and add eggs one at a time to the creamed mixture. Beat together until fully combined and no visible egg is seen.
Add vanilla extract to the buttermilk.
Turn mixer down to low speed. Beginning and ending with flour, slowly add ⅓ of the flour mixture to the creamed mixture. Add half of the buttermilk. Repeat with flour and buttermilk. Finish with last third of flour mixture. Slow mix until fully combined, be careful not to over mix.
Pour half of batter into bundt pan. Add one can of dulce de leche into center of bundt pan. Add the remainder of the cake batter to the bundt pan. Use spoon or butter knife to swirl caramel into cake batter.
Bake cake at 350F for 55-60 minutes until cake is gold brown and slightly jiggles to the touch.
Allow cake to completely cool to room temperature. Invert cake onto a cake board or cake pedestal.
Cover top of cake with other can of dulce de leche. Use spoon or butter knife to spend evenly over the cake. Cover dulce de leche cake with chopped and Cosmic Shimmered dulce de leche cookies.
Devour and Enjoy!