Dulce de Leche cake with Vanilla Bean

 

Flour, butter, sugar and eggs are the most important ingredients for a baker. And I’ve been having a hard time for the past few days because we have been faced with a short supply of butter in the market. Yes, butter. The butter I have been wanting to drench my toast with (topped with Nutella, even better!). The butter I wanted to use for herb butter mushrooms. The butter that makes everything better (watching Julie and Julia has its influence, alright!).

I was itching to bake and I could not for the life of me find a way around this (no butter substitutes, please). As luck would have it, my grandmom had a handful of sticks stocked up in her freezer and she sent some to me!

I had seen an eggless cake recipe on Divine Taste and couldn’t resist making something similar just for the lovely crumb. When I saw the recipe, I instantly knew I’d use Dulce de Leche instead of condensed milk. And then later it struck me that steeping the vanilla in milk would add so much more depth to the flavor instead of using extract.

One point to note here is that besides the sweetened condensed milk, there is no sugar added. I found that I needed something to increase the sweetness in the form of an icing – I drizzled some milk-sugar icing, you could use anything. Most might be stumped about a recipe that doesn’t call for eggs, but this recipe works beautifully without them and yet results in a soft, moist cake. I have finally found my go-to eggless recipe!

just look at the specs of vanilla!

Dulce de Leche Cake with Vanilla Beans Steeped Milk

Inspired from: Divine Taste

Yield: A 9 inch cake or 1 8 inch bundt cake + 4 cupcakes

7 fl oz / 200 milk

1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

8 oz. / 225g flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

14 oz. / 400gm dulce de Leche (oh, you must click though - just for the photos!)

110 gm/1 stick butter

4 tbsp yogurt

For the icing

125g icing sugar

2-3 tbsp milk

1. Scrape out the innards of the vanilla bean and stir it into the milk along with the remains of the bean. Simmer for 2-3 minutes and remove from heat. Let this continue to steep for at least another 30 minutes.
2. Grease tin generously with butter. Preheat the oven at 175C/350F.
3. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda.
4. In a large bowl beat the butter and the dulce de leche together until it is combined. Mix in the yogurt and beat again.
5. At this point, reheat the milk until it is hot and mix it with the butter and dulce de leche mixture.
6. Fold in the flour mixture, with a spatula.
7. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes for an 8 inch bundt cake or a little longer for a 9 inch cake at 175C/350F.
8. To make the icing, put the icing sugar in a small bowl and add 1 tbsp of milk at a time to moisten the sugar. Keep stirring and add the milk a little at a time until the icing is thin enough to drizzle from a spoon. Drizzle this icing over the cooled cake. Did you know the tines of a fork work beautifully for this?

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