Baking a Bitter Cake

In the winter of 2008, I tore a recipe for a Whiskey-Soaked Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake out of the New York Times's dining section. I was so excited to make it. It contained quite literally all of the best things in the world: lots of butter, very dark chocolate, espresso, and whiskey--lots and lots of whiskey! It sounded delicious and exotic and very rich.

But I'd never made a liqueur-soaked cake before. I was a little afraid, so I tucked the scrap of newspaper away in my recipe box and forgot about it until a week ago when I was looking for something special to make for a family holiday party. I unfolded the crumpled newsprint and thought Aha! It fit the bill exactly: it would look beautiful, taste delicious, and feel distinctly holiday-ish--by which I mean sophisticated and special and a little expensive. Simply put, it would be perfect for a Sunday afternoon Christmas party with relatives.

So I set to work. At its core, it's a fairly straightforward butter cake recipe: it starts with creaming butter and sugar, then come the eggs and vanilla, and then you add the dry ingredients at the end. The only quirk is that the recipe ends similarly to Nigella Lawson's classic Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake recipe (which involves beating in alternating parts liquid and dry ingredients to the batter right before it goes in the oven).

The batter turned out beautifully: fluffy and rich and very, very alcoholic. I licked the spoon as I cleaned up and got a little bit tipsy. I mean, the cake itself has a whole cup of whiskey in it, even before it's baked and sprinkled with whiskey again!

Boozy, boozy batter.

The batter tasted a little, well, intense to me, but I figured that most of the whiskey flavor would bake out. So I went with it. I threw the batter in my Great Aunt Shirley's burnt orange bundt pan . . .

and baked it up. It came out perfect-looking, moist, and very very fragrant. My entire apartment smelled like rich chocolate with a touch of whiskey and espresso mixed in, as if Starbucks started serving cocktails alongside their mochas and lattes.

I plated it on my beautiful new milk glass cake platter (thanks, Mom!), splattered it with a few hearty tablespoons of whiskey, topped it with powdered sugar, and mourned the fact that I couldn't try it until the party. (Let's be honest: taste testing is the entire point of making cookies and cupcakes. Even if you make them to share, you get to try them right away--I need that instant gratification!)

The completed cake.

But I was terribly disappointed once dessert time arrived the next day. The cake was bitter, unbelievably so. The espresso powder, unsweetened chocolate, and whiskey all worked together to give it bite and nothing but. I couldn't taste the sugar or the butter or anything but char. The cake wasn't burnt at all, but it tasted like a chocolate-covered espresso bean that had spent some time in a fireplace!

I think that public opinion on the cake was split: half the party thought it was fantastic, and the other half smiled very politely and left a big chunk on their plates. As I watched my relatives nibbling away at the cake, I thought about how I'd do it better next time. Melissa Clark, the recipe author, had written that her grandmother had been the originator of the recipe. Clark had taken the recipe, drastically upped the alcohol content, and switched to unsweetened chocolate to add "sophistication" to the dessert while reducing its sweetness.

I decided right then and there that old fashioned was definitely the way to go with this one. Next time, I'm doing it Grandma Clark style: I'll be using semi-sweet chocolate, halving the espresso powder, and replacing half the whiskey with water. And, if it still turns out bitter, I think that a nice glaze (I'm thinking whiskey, cream, vanilla, and powdered sugar) will do a trick.

I may have been bitterly disappointed by this recipe, but I wasn't beaten. Hear this, Whiskey-Soaked Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake: we shall meet again!

The intrepid baker, ready for round two.