Chocolate Whiskey Cake

This may be one of the ugliest Bundt cakes with icing I've seen or made, but at the same time, it is one of the tastiest-looking cakes I've seen as well.

Cursed fast-drying icing!! *shakes fist at imaginary pot of icing* GRR!! You will not defeat me next time!!

Happily, this cake will grace many more events in my lifetime because of how delicious it was, and so I will have more chances to make the appearance look presentable!


Mid-November is a time for whiskey. Not because of some arcane cultural tradition, but because one of my classmates, who is particularly fond of the stuff, has his birthday in mid-November (celebrated belatedly in early December this year). For the last couple of years I have tried to find cake recipes in honor of the occasion, and this recipe outdid my offering for last year, I think.

I started out with the Chocolate Whiskey Cake as found on My Baking Adventures and pretty much made the cake as according to the recipe verbatim. Half a cup of whiskey, wooo! (It's only 4 shots for the entire cake, if you're counting, but it definitely has a strong presence in the cake)

As the cake was cooling, I moved on to contemplate the icing....


The recipe did not include an icing suggestion, so I was left to my own devices. Whiskey has some caramel-y notes, wouldn't you agree? So I thought the perfect pairing would be to use the caramel icing that made a spectacular showing with the Cinnamon Pecan Babka Rolls I made back in July...

...with a splash of whiskey stirred in at the end, of course.

So this where it got messy. The frosting is pretty thick, and I must have let it cool too much before starting to pour it onto the cake in pretty ribbons. Except that as I was trying to make sure the frosting was spreading evenly around the cake, everything just started hardening on me, and my last attempts to spread icing evenly on the top with the spatula didn't spill down the edges like a thinner icing would. Oh well.

The cake was uber-moist, had a faint hint of whiskey, and the icing paired wonderfully with the flavor of chocolate and whiskey while adding a extra punch to remind you that whiskey was the star of the evening.