chocolate whiskey cake
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 03:32PM 
This cake is one of my absolute favorites, ever. It spent a good bit of time on the restaurant menu, despite its, err, unsightliness. This cake is downright ugly, at least for people with rather conventional notions of pastry beauty. It's like that princess and frog....gross looking, but when she finally laid her mouth on it, she could see and appreciate what was behind the facade.
This facade hides a couple of ingredients that are subtle but powerful: coffee, black pepper, and cloves. None of these suggest themselves, but they unite with the other ingredients to form a deeply flavored cake. It's so moist, so dense, so amazing.
And you probably already know this, but bourbon and scotch are both whiskey. Scotch is whiskey from Scotland, typically with a peatier flavor, and bourbon is whiskey from the US, fuller bodied and slightly sweet. Revelations.
chocolate whiskey cake
3/4 c plus 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 c strong brewed coffee
1/2 c whiskey
12 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 c sugar
1 c brown sugar
2 c ap flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/8 tsp ground cloves
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 c mini chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 325. Butter a 10 inch springform pan then dust with the 3tbsp of cocoa powder, knocking out excess.
Heat the coffee, whiskey, butter, and remaining cup of cocoa powder in a medium heavy saucepan over low heat until butter is melted, whisking occasionally. Add sugars and whisk until dissolved, remove from heat. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and cool.
While chocoalte cools, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, black pepper, and cloves in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and vanilla. Starting with a slow drizzle, whisk the eggs into cooled chocolate mixture until combined. Add flour mixture and whisk until just combined, then fold in chocolate chips. Pour batter into pan and bake until a wooden pick comes out mostly clean, about 1 hour and 5 min.
Cool cake, store in fridge after one day, wrapped in plastic.
Reader Comments (5)
Woah. I need that cake.
That recipe sounds amazing. At the restaurant, did you serve it with anything? A dollop of whipped cream, bourbon or vanilla flavored, perhaps?
I've got a whiskey revelation for you, too: Scotch is "whisky" without the "e" you'd find if you typed Irish Whiskey or Bourbon Whiskey. I found that out the hard way after sending an email to 18,000 customers about a "Scotch Whiskey" dinner we were hosting.
aaahaha. thanks for sharing your hard earned wisdom, my friend. noted.
as i recall, we perched the cake on some chocolate sauce and I THINK we served it with some bourbon ice cream! How do I not remember this? I need to write things down.
I have borrowed whiskey from the neighbor, specifically so I can make this cake. Stupidly, I agreed to share it with them and now they have left town for the summer. The question is, should I uphold my end of the bargain? Or should I just make it twice. That's the real solution, isn't it? Twice the whiskey, twice the cake.
I have made this twice, and blogged it here: http://nojuju.blogspot.com/2010/11/chocolate-whiskey-cake.html
It's a favorite. Thanks for a fantastic recipe.