Fall Layer Cake

So, when this month's challenge was posted I was in the midst of a 3-day juice cleanse. No caffeine, no alcohol, no anything but raw fruits and vegetables. Why? Something about detoxifying. Anyway, when you can't eat you find yourself fantasizing about eating, cooking, baking and everything but choking down yet another icy cold all-fruit smoothie or a shot of gag-inducing wheat grass.
Then I see it; layer cake. Mmmmmm...cake. I spent my weekend searching endless amounts of cake recipes trying to decide what the greatest, most delicious, decadent yummi-ness I could set myself to the task of making. Here is what I decided on: A three-layer Pumpkin Spice Cake frosted with caramel frosting AND cream cheese frosting between each layer. I combined three different recipes to come up with what I hoped to be the world's greatest cake ever.
The pumpkin cake recipe is from Country Living and can be found here. I was making this to bring to a family gathering and got a request to leave out the nutmeg. I substituted by adding a little more cinnamon. I also used Splenda Sugar instead of real sugar. Other than that, I stuck with what was written.The recipe was easy and the cake came together beautifully. I was a little nervous that the layers seemed awfully thin but once they were loaded down with cream cheese and caramel it was fine.
For the cream cheese frosting I used this recipe from AllRecipes. Some of the others just used way too many ingredients (heavy cream, rum, etc) and I wanted something more plain since I was also adding caramel. Delicious and it covered the giant crack in my first layer just beautifully!

For the caramel frosting, I kind of improvised. It basically involved about 1/2 c. butter, 1 c. brown sugar, 1/4 c. milk, 1 t. vanilla and maybe 2 c/ of confectionery sugar. Melt everything on the stove together-add confectionery sugar until it's a good thickness for spreading. I poured caramel between each layer and then put the rest on the top of the cake.

End result? Love. The caramel made it a little over the top but it was delicious.
The only problem? I made the cake on Thursday and then the frosting on Friday night and didn't serve the cake until Saturday so it did dry out a little. That's my fault, though. The recipe made a really moist cake but I didn't have a proper cake container to store it so air got to it.
Posted by -colleen