This dulce de leche cake with American milkduds candy is the perfect cake for any caramel-lover! It’s easy, sweet and delicious. Perfect for cool weather in particular – there’s something so comforting about caramel flavours during autumn and winter!

Dulce de Leche Cake

Dulce de leche is one of my favourite flavours – plus, it’s so easy to make your own dulce de leche! I have another recipe for that here. It’s actually one of my favourite recipes – I make it so often it really shouldn’t be allowed!

Why should I make a Dulce de Leche Cake?

• It’s something out of the ordinary!
• The caramel-y flavours from the Dulce de Leche sauce will have you coming back for more.
• It’s a pretty easy cake really… nothing difficult about it’s preparation.
• Makes for a lovely Autumn cake when you’ve got guests coming over (or just for yourself?)

What is dulce de leche?

Dulce de leche is a caramel-flavoured sauce from Latin America. It’s made from either condensed milk or milk and sugar. It’s surprisingly easy to make, too! You can find more about how to make it in my recipe for it here.

How do you use dulce de leche?

You can use it in so many ways! I love to use dulce de leche as a dip for fruit – it makes getting your 5-a-day so much more enjoyable!

It’s also surprisingly great when spread on sandwiches – it’s a very sweet spread (a little bit like nutella – but thinner). It goes surprisingly well with peanut butter and bananas!

I also like to use it on cakes mixed into buttercream icing – which is how I use it here! Of course, you could always use it alone on cakes and cupcakes, but I find that it’s usually a little bit too thin for this. After all, it’s typically used as more of a sauce than an icing!

How do I make this dulce de leche cake with Milkduds?

The method for this cake is actually super simple! The cake component is really pretty much the same as most other sponge cakes. It’s the decoration where the dulce de leche comes in to play!

What do I need to make this cake?

You don’t need much for the cake and decoration. Trust me, no matter what the occasion you’re making this for, you’re going to have an amazing cake and it’ll all work out just perfectly!

For the cake:

• Butter – this recipe doesn’t include salt, so if you’d like to use salted butter then go right ahead!
• Caster sugar. This is essentially just slightly finer granulated sugar (for anyone in other countries who might not know) – in a pinch, you can put some granulated sugar in a food processor until it’s a slightly finer-grained sugar. Then just use it in the recipe as instructed.
• Large eggs. Make sure to use large eggs as otherwise the texture of your cake will be affected. You can read more about why egg size matters here.
• Vanilla bean paste. This is different to vanilla extract, however you can use the same amount of vanilla extract as you would have used paste.
• Self-raising flour. You don’t need to use any fancy cake flour – just regular self-raising flour.
• Baking powder. Make sure that you don’t use bicarbonate of soda here by accident – they’re very different things!

For the buttercream and decorations:

• 5 tbsp + 3 tsp dulce de leche (separately).
• Icing sugar – for Americans, this is called confectioner’s sugar.
• Butter – again, I prefer not to use salt in my icing, but if you’d prefer to use salted butter (or unsalted with a pinch of salt) then that’s up to you completely!

Equipment List

3 x 20cm diameter sandwich cake tins
Greaseproof paper cut to size of the tins, ready to line them (or use the flour method – see below)
A mixing bowl
Wire rack for cooling
An electric mixer or whisk
A spoon
Piping bags
D7 star nozzle
D10 round nozzle

How do I make this cake?

The method here is really easy – anyone can make this cake and have it turn out absolutely perfectly!

Tip – Don’t have any greaseproof paper? You can use flour like I did (this was made during lockdown when going out to the shops wasn’t easy). All you need to do is grease your pans and the add in a tiny bit of flour. Shake the flour all about and tip our the excess. This flour layer will stop your cakes from sticking to the pans!

To make the cake:

1. Preheat the oven and grease the cake tins. Line with greaseproof paper (or do the flour method above).

2. Add all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix them together until just combined.

3. Divide the mixture between the 3 tins evenly (or your cakes won’t all be the same depth!)

4. Bake for 25 minutes or until just cooked through and leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes.

5. Turn the cakes out of the tin and onto a wire rack and allow them to cool completely.

To decorate:

1. Mix the butter and icing sugar together until smooth. Ideally, the butter should be at room temperature for this in order to give your buttercream the best texture.

2. Add the 5 tbsp of dulce de leche and mix again until just incorporated. This will help to lightly flavour your buttercream with the rich caramel flavour of dulce de leche.

3. Place your D10 nozzle in your piping bag and snip off the end. Place the piping bag in a jug and fold the sides over the edge. Doing so will help you fill your bag a lot easier. Spoon the other 3 tsp of dulce de leche into the bag, ensuring that it drips down the sides of the bag. This will help to marble your buttercream with the rich dulce de leche. Then spoon in 4 large scoops of icing.

4. Pipe the icing in a ring on the bottom and assemble the first layer of sponge. I actually used a star nozzle because I lost my D10! A D10 or any large round nozzle would be a lot easier than a star.

5. Do the same between the next layer of sponge and then top with the final layer.

6. Using the star nozzle, pipe a ring of ‘dollops’ around the edge of the top sponge. Pipe a smaller ring in the middle, with one star to fill the circle.

7. Fill the gap between circles with milk duds. If you like, you can look at the circles above/below to help you follow this guide.

You can see the full recipe card below with all of the ingredient measurements and full instructions. And most of all, make sure to enjoy your cake!

MORE CAKE RECIPES TO TRY 

Chocolate Fudge Traybake – Small Batch

No-bake M&M Cheesecake

Peanut Cake with Caramel Buttercream

Apple and Blackberry Cake

I’m linking this post up with cookblogshare over at Apply to Face blog