Caramel Cake w/ Caramelized Butter Frosting - Daring Bakers November Challenge

This month's Daring Bakers November host was Dolores and the co hosts included Alex and Jenny. They picked Shuna Fish Lydon's signature caramel cake for the challenge. Three main components of the this cake are: the caramel syrup, the cake and the frosting. I decided to break the work down between three days. I made the caramel syrup first.

Caramel syrup in this case, is the end result of cooking sugar with water. This may seem easy, but I have messed up this process by crystallizing the sugar when I had to cramelize sugar for Creme Caramel. I learned my lession and this time around, I did not mess with the sugar and let it cook until it reached a dark amber color. Both the cake and the frosting calls for the use of this syrup. Once I got the syrup done, everything else was easy. Now that I've made the cake, I can say that I wished I would've cooked the syrup further to give it a more richer amber color. I made the Caramel Syrup on Monday of the week of Thanksgiving and finished the cake on Tuesday before work. I didn't think I'd be done until Thursday, I guess the motivation to try the cake got me to finish early. I took it to work so that I can try it with my co-workers. I was hoping that I'd save it for Thanksgiving day, but the cake was long gone. My first insticts were the frosting was too sweet...but then I had a taste of it with the cake and I was like not bad, then I had another bite and I was like..hmm..good and then after a few more bites I was sold on this cake. This cake is definitely worth all the mess caramel syrup leaves for me to clean up. I loved the flavor caramel brought to the cake and as for the frosting, the caramelized butter frosting added further to the richness of the cake and made it one of the most unique tasting frosting I've had on a cake. I LOVED the cake and can't wait to make it again.
If you are interested in the recipe source, you can refer to this link and to learn more about the author - Shuna Fish Lydon and see more of her wonderful creations, please check out her blog at eggbeater.