I came across this momofuku pretzel cake here and it looked incredible. Since we were planning to watch the football games with friends this cake filled with pretzels and beer seemed like the perfect thing to bring!
Because the "Pancake Princess" did such a great job documenting how to make this delicious salty sweet treat I would refer you to look at her blog to to check it out. I will however, put the recipe here (with the adjustments I made) and give a few tips on things that I learned in my attempt to make this.
There are 4 parts to this cake:
pretzel crunch
cake
stout ganache
burnt honey frosting
I made the first two parts one night and then finished the cake the next day. It was a long process the second day partly because the cake requires some time in the freezers if you are going to make this be aware of the time commitment.
I started by making the pretzel crunch
Pretzel Crunch
2 1/2 cups of pretzels (I used waffle pretzels)
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
2 Tablespoons powdered nonfat milk
2 Tablespoons melted salted butter
Heat oven to 350
This is like making a crumble to top a baked fruit desert.
Throw pretzels into food processor to break up a bit then add the rest of the ingredients to mix together, being careful not to over crush the pretzels
Put the mixture on parchment lined baking sheet and cook for 15 minutes then set aside
Once it was cooled I stored it in a container until I was ready to use it.
Next I made the cake
Pretzel Cake
6 Tablespoons room temperature butter
1 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon molasses
3 large eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup flour
3 cups pretzel 'flour' - this is just pretzels put in the food processor and ground down to a flour consistency
Line a 9 x 13 pan with parchment and grease it with canola oil
Using an electric mixer combine the butter, sugar and molasses until well mixed.
Add the eggs one at a time. Once well mixed add the buttermilk and oil.
Mix together dry ingredients in a separate bowl and then add to the wet ingredients. You may need to stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula to incorporate everything and not over mix the dough.
Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Once the cake was cooled a bit I stuck it in the fridge and left it there over night.
The next day I was ready to make the frosting and assemble the cake.
I started with the
Stout Ganache
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
3 Tablespoons chocolate stout beer (you will need more of the beer later, so hold on to it)
1 Tablespoon milk
Put all the ingredients in a double boiler, stir as the chocolate chips melt and once smooth remove from heat.
Then it was time for the burnt honey frosting which was the most intimidating part of this for me
Burnt Honey Frosting
2 1/2 Tablespoons honey
3 Tablespoons water
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick of butter
Put the honey in a small saucepan, when it begins to boil reduce heat to a simmer until the honey begins to smoke then remove from heat and stir in 2 tablespoons of water.
Whisk the egg yolks in an electric mixer until pale and frothy
Add sugar and last tablespoon of water to the honey mixture and return to stove to cook it until it reaches 240 or 'soft ball stage' lots of carmel colored bubbles
Next you'll incorporate this into the egg yolks, remember this is very hot so you want it to drizzle down the side of the bowl to cool a bit before hitting the yolks, you've basically just made honey candy so the challenge i found was once it hit the cold bowl it started to solidify and much of it ended up stuck to the side of the bowl instead of incorporated into the egg yolk, I think I either needed to use a smaller bowl or add the honey lower down the side of the bowl or perhaps both! Even with much of the honey stuck on the bowl you could still taste it in the frosting.
Lastly add in the butter a few tablespoons at a time
When you have a nice smooth frosting you're ready to move on to cake assembly.
Cake Assembly
This is a 6 inch cake. The recommendation was a 6 inch springform but because this cake is 3 layers you need to modify the spring form to add some height to hold the whole cake. I do not have a 6" pan but I do have a 6" pot and it was just the right height to hold 3 layers of cake!
I pulled the cooked cake out of the 9 x 13 pan by lifting up the parchment. I placed the pot I was going to use to hold the cake upside down (so bottom was up) on the cake to make an impression for a guide to cut out a 6 " circle of cake. I did that twice, so I had to 6" rounds and some cake scraps.
Then I lined the pot with parchment.
Press the cake scraps into the bottom of pot then pour 2 tablespoons of the chocolate stout beer over the cake
Spread 1/3 of the ganache over the cake then add 1/3 of the pretzel crunch evenly on top of that and top that with 1/2 of the burnt honey frosting. The frosting is sticky and kind of hard to work with so don't anticipate begin able to spread it very well, if you drop lots of bits of the frosting around the weight of the next layer will help to spread it together a bit.
Place one round of cake on top and repeat, 2 tablespoons of stout, use 1/2 of what is left of the ganache (1/3 of the total), 1/2 of what is left of the pretzels (1/3 of the total), and the remainder of the burnt honey frosting.
Place the last layer of cake and top with 2 tablespoons of chocolate stout, the rest of the chocolate ganache and top with the remainder of the pretzel crunch.
Now you have some waiting to do…
Cover the cake and put it in the freezer for at least 3 hours.
Remove the cake from the freezer about 3 hours before you're ready to enjoy it.
As you can see in the photo above there is lots of extra parchment sticking out of the pot, I covered the cake with the parchment and plastic wrap to freeze, I removed the plastic wrap and kept the parchment covering the cake. I turned the cake over holding the top in one hand and removing the pot with the other hand then returned the cake to upright.
This cake was well worth the work! It's great to make when there are enough people to help eat the whole thing because the pretzel crunch will begin to get a little soggy if left. It's also a bit messy so easier not to have to try to store again.
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