This Turtle Cake is a decadent treat worth indulging in. Enjoy the caramel filling in between layers of chocolate velvet cake with chocolate ganache icing on the sides and chopped pecans on top.
This is the best chocolate cake I've ever made. Everyone who ate it, just raved. The only thing I would suggest would be to refrigerate the cake once you've stacked the layers if you aren't planning to serve the cake immediately. This helps to keep the cake from sliding around after the caramel filling is added.
This turned out superbly, and I had wanted to try it for some time, chiefly because of my Mom's Caramel Cakes of childhood. I'd give the recipe 4-5 stars, but there are several reasons why I'm not doing so: 1) I think it is better in recipes to write chocolate in ounces and/or squares, which is what I used in both frosting and cake (those 'morsels' are absurdly expensive and not better than the Perugina or even Hershey's Bitter Chocolate. 2) I made a Julia Child ButterCream Chocolate Frosting instead of the Ganache, which I tend to prefer poured while still liquid and also, it requires so much chocolate, that I think such a lavish frosting should be by itself, not combined with Caramel. The Buttercream was plenty rich and the whole confection is very sweet. 3) I wouldn't have been able to do this perfectly from the Master Recipe, but gained hugely from the reviewers' experiences, so there was no mess or runny caramel. I used almonds instead of pecans and only on the top, so it would be creamy more than crunchy. Even though it's perfect, I prefer the Moeulleux Chocolate Cake, which is just a single layer of dense bitter chocolate, with only eggs and basics added, and maybe a tablespoon or two of rum; or my Mom's old-fashioned Caramel Nut Cake, because the extreme sweetness is not too much on a plain white cake. We enjoyed it, but it's too rich and sweet for me to want to make it more than once. Still, it is a lovely cake if you eat only very small portions at a time.
This is a beautiful dessert. BUT, the caramel filling needs work. It just is too much to load on this cake making it ooze out and make a mess when you serve it. It also was hard to get the consistency right and tends to be difficult to thicken enough to stay on the layers. The cake and the ganache are scrumptious! After the cake sat a day or two the filling got better but the cake was still too sweet for most people. God recipe and great potential but needs a little work.
The trick is to make the filling a couple of hours ahead so that it can cool down and thicken up, I also make the cake the day before and placed wrapped up in frig, also I use store bought icing. Have been making this cake since December 2003. Has became the cake that everyone wants for birthdays etc.... Can't go wrong this great cake.
After years of planning to make this and not, I finally made it last Thanksgiving. OMG! This is the best thing that I have ever eaten. I made it again Christmas. The layers are so smooth and perfect in every way. It does take alot of time to make but so worth it. Everyone, several neighbors included, agreed that it is the best cake ever. I would rate it with any 5 Star resturant dessert that I have had.
The first time I made the cake, it was a disaster but it tasted wonderful. The cakes were a little too soft and the caramel too runny. What I did the next time was put the cakes in the freezer to firm up and then when I put the caramel on, I let it sit overnight and carved off whatever ran down the sides. That way the ganache was sure to stick.
