Recipe: Scottish Cranachan Cake with Whisky Caramel and Salted Tablet

It’s Burns Night tomorrow and in light of this I wanted to make a cake that featured all of the delicious sweet things to come out of Scotland. Therefore I came up with this bad boy; It’ s a cranachan cake, covered in a whisky caramel sauce and topped off with crumbled salted tablet.

For those of you not sure what cranachan is, it’s like a Scottish version of an eton mess or trifle. It contains whipped cream, whisky, oats, honey and raspberries and usually comes served in a small glass.

For my cranachan cake I put whisky soaked oats, and raspberries into my sponge and then covered the cake in a honey buttercream. In then drizzled the cake in the whisky caramel sauce and topped it off with some salted tablet that I made during a previous baking session. Diabetics beware, this cake is super sweet.

Prep Time: 2.5 hours

Serves: 10-12

Ingredients:

For the Sponge:

400g Stork

400g Caster Sugar

400g Self Raising Flour

8 Eggs

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

A Cup of Frozen Raspberries

80g Porridge Oats

50 ml Scotch Whisky

For the Icing:

500g Butter

1 kg Icing Sugar

4 Tbsp Honey

Raspberry Jam

For the Whisky Caramel Sauce:

200g Caster Sugar

125 ml Water

100g Butter

100 ml Double Cream

70 ml Scotch Whisky

A handful of Salted Tablet as decoration

Method:

1.Preheat oven to 180°C/ 350 F/ Gas Mark 4.

2. Put the oats on a baking tray and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes or until they are golden brown.

3. Remove from the oven, place in a container and then mix in the whisky so that the oats absorb all of the flavour.

4. Cream together the stork and caster sugar.

5. Add the eggs, flour and vanilla extract and mix.

6. Now fold in the whisky soaked oats and frozen raspberries.

7. Divide the mixture between two 6 inch cake tins and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until the cakes are golden brown and springy to the touch.

PLEASE NOTE- This mixture is enough to fill FOUR 6 Inch cake tins. HOWEVER I only have 2, therefore I left half of the mix in the fridge while the first two cakes were baking. I then repeated the process with the other half of the mix once the first two cakes were done. It didn’t seem to do the cakes any harm as they all turned out the same.

8. Once all four cakes are baked leave them to one side to cool and get started on your buttercream.

9. To make the buttercream, mix the butter and honey together then gradually add the icing sugar until you have a soft fluffy buttercream.

10. Time to construct… Sandwich each layer of cake with a layer of raspberry and jam and buttercream.

11. Now cover the whole of the cake in the buttercream. It doesn’t need to be neat at this stage, just get the whole this covered. It is really useful to have a palette knife and turntable for this, but you can always just use a normal knife or spatula.

12. Put the cake in the fridge for 5 minutes to stiffen up the buttercream.

13. Take the cake out of the fridge and then scrape the edges with a cake scraper or knife. Add another layer of buttercream and then scrape again. Repeat this process until you are left with smooth icing.

14. Now it is time to make the whisky caramel sauce. Place the caster sugar and water in a saucepan and simmer over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved and it starts to turn a deep amber colour.

15. Remove from the heat and then whisk in the butter and then the cream and whisky.

16. It will be quite runny at this stage, so it is best to put it in the fridge for a bit after this to harden it up.

17. Time to decorate. Pour the whisky caramel sauce on top of the cake and allow it to drizzle down the sides.

18. Crush up some Salted Tablet that you can either make yourself or buy ready made and then sprinkle it on one half of the cake in a crescent shape.

There you have it. Do you think that Rabbie would approve?