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.

Infusing Vodka: The Maiden Voyage

For the last few Christmases, the adults in my mom's family have done a white elephant-style bottle exchange in lieu of giving each other presents. We all bring a wrapped-up bottle--which can be anything from a bottle of shampoo to a bottle of Boone's Farm to a bottle of high-priced spirits--and draw numbers. We're ruthless about stealing each others' good stuff, and it's great fun.

It's also wildly unpredictable: Last year, I ended up with a bottle of water (curse you, Aunt Rita!). This year, I had a bottle of Jack Daniels stolen from me, a crystal skull-shaped bottle of vodka stolen from me, and ended up with a bottle of spiced rum, which I then traded for two bottles of wine.

In the past, I've brought over-sized bottles of beer, holiday beer sampler sets, and bourbon to the exchange. This year, I wanted to do something more interesting for my contribution, so I decided to infuse my own vodka.

You can Google "how to infuse vodka" and find a few million sites that will show you the basics of the process. It's pretty simple: put some stuff in a jar, pour the vodka over it, put the jar in a dark place, and wait. You can successfully infuse vodka with almost any flavor, from fruit to coffee to herbs to bacon (yes, bacon! it's supposed to be fantastic in Bloody Marys).

There's a lot of information out there, but every site that I visited said that infusing vodka is a tricky thing: you can follow a recipe exactly and it'll still turn out terrible, or something that tastes wonderful one day will turn acrid the next, and that it all depends on what vodka you're using and the quality of your fruit and where you store your jars and what phase of the moon you're working in and whether or not your ring finger is longer than your middle finger, etc.

You get the picture. Obviously, it's a oft-attempted yet somewhat tricky process. After reviewing a few of these sites, I decided to take my chances without using a recipe. If the infused vodkas tasted terrible, I figured I could throw the half-empty Svedka bottle in a bag and make a joke of it. Heck, a half-liter of good vodka is better than a full liter of foul homemade liqueur, right?

And a couple of times, I was pretty close to dumping the infusions down the drain. I made one batch of cranberry-orange vodka and one of ginger-pear vodka. The ingredients were pretty basic: lots of Svedka along with fresh cranberries, oranges, pears, and ginger.

I cut them up, threw them in a couple of old jars, and waited.

After day one, the oranges had made the cranberry-orange vodka into a bitter mess, and I had to strain the oranges out. Similarly, the ginger had taken over the pear infusion and the stuff reeked to high heck. I took the ginger chips out, too.

After day three, both vodkas smelled like rotting fruit and tasted like rubbing alcohol. I fished out the discolored pear chunks, stirred a little sugar into both bottles, and began to pray.

After day five, the cranberry vodka had taken on a bright red color, had lost a little of its obvious alcohol flavor, and was pretty palatable; I could sip it straight without gagging (something I could never do with plain vodka). The pear vodka seemed like a loss--it felt hot and somehow sickly in my mouth--but I strained both jars anyway and stuck them in the fridge.

Mysteriously, on day eight, both vodkas had developed smooth, mellow flavors. The pear-ginger vodka tasted like sweet, ripe pears but had an intriguing ginger fragrance. The cranberry-orange vodka had lost its bitterness and tasted like a cosmo waiting to happen.

So what happened inside these battered old Mason jars? It seemed like some sort of magic: every day I tasted the vodkas, they were completely different and completely surprising. I waffled between despair and elation with every wring of the cheesecloth, with every whiff that escaped the newly opened jars. If I'd had less faith in the process, I would have thrown them out without giving them a chance to transform themselves into their final deliciousness.

My Uncle Mike ended up with the vodkas in the bottle exchange, and he gave them a very positive review. He sampled them on Christmas day and found them smooth enough to drink straight without diluting them in juice or soda.

I guess that this makes them a rousing success. But what a nerve-racking procedure! I suppose that infusng strong spirits is not for the faint of heart.

And you thought you'd get out of this post pun-free. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!