Tonight we tried Movie Night with Jay and Mally – I tried to do easy to eat finger foods. I love these chicken fingers, but my sweet potatoes weren’t as good as usual.

I have a severe weakness for salty things. In particular, salty caramel and salty chocolate – so it was inevitable that I was going to make this cake at some point. It’s pretty involved, so I needed a somewhat free weekend. I decided to make it this weekend as a test for a party – I was asked to bring a cake for a friend’s upcoming birthday party and this is one of the candidates.

The cake is three layers of chocolate cake. Each layer is topped with caramel and ganache and there’s fleur de sel sprinkled on top and between each layer. It looks pretty good here, but I had all sorts of structural and other challenges with this cake (documented in full at Kitchen F#!% Ups). Once I got things stabilized, the cake is really delicious. I’m not a fan of refrigerated cake, but it seemed to benefit from it.

• Crisp Curried Chicken Fingers with Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce (Fine Cooking #74, November 2005, p. 90c)
• Baked Sweet Potato Wedges
• Sweet & Salty Cake (Baked, p. 67)