Krystina Castella - Booze Cakes: Confections Spiked with Spirits, Wine, and Beer

Copyright 2010 Krystina Castella and Terry Lee Stone

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2009944100

eBook ISBN: 978-1-59474-741-0
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59474-423-5

Trade paperback designed by Jenny Kraemer
Trade paperback production management by John J. McGurk

Photography by Daniel Kukla except the following: pages by Jenny Kraemer
Baking and recipe testing by Jennifer Perillo
www.injennieskitchen.com

Some recipes and text on first appeared in Field Guide to Cookies by Anita Chu. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Quirk Books
215 Church Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
quirkbooks.com

Note: All sugar is granulated, unless otherwise specified. All eggs are large. All ingredientsincluding eggs, butter, and cream cheeseshould be used at room temperature for optimal results. Please bake responsibly!

v3.1

Introduction

BOOZE CAKES BASICS

Think of Booze Cakes as your guidebook to a brand-new baking adventure. Let us be your cruise directors and libation engineers. We are relaxed bakerswe bake for fun! Were here to counter the idea that baking is hard. In our opinion, baking is easy when you use fresh and simple ingredients, throw in some booze, pop it into the oven, and wait for the magic to happen (while enjoying a cocktail or two). These delicious tipsy confections are meant to be savored and shared.

Cake has been around since ancient times. So has alcohol. Both are essential to nourishment, ritual, and celebration. Greeks and Romans added beer to cake as a preservative. And because beer is made from yeast, it functions as a leavening agent as well as imparting a rich flavor to baked goods.

Later, Europeans used various alcohols, such as whiskey and brandy, to spice and preserve their confections; in the 1700s, the British combined sherry, cake, and custard and the result is the tasty trifles we all know and love. Rum-infused desserts became all the rage when sugarcane made that alcohol cheap and widely available throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. In colonial America, baked cakes were drizzled with brandy liqueur and stored in a tight container until all the alcohol was absorbed, then they were drizzled with liquor and stored a few more times to produce a delicious treat thatif undecorated and wrapped airtightcould keep for years .

During Americas Prohibition era, discretely boozy alcohol-infused cakes were popular treats among tipplers, as was the cocktail: Both used fruit and sweeteners to soften the taste of rot-gut hooch. The 1970s saw another booze-cake revival, spurred by societys permissive attitude toward mood-altering substances. Today, cocktail-cake parties are an easy way to sweeten everyday life. When the going gets rough, the tough make booze cakes!

Baking is magic. Baking with booze is even more magic. Technically, baking is chemistry, but we dont need to get into the comprehensive scientific explanation of how baking works. Theres one basic rule: Never bake with anything you wouldnt drink. Do you have to purchase premium brands? No. Just use your favoritesyoull have plenty left over for cocktails. Heres a brief overview of great baking alcohols and how they can be used to flavor cakes.

Beer is brewed from water, malted barley thats often combined with other grains, like corn, rye, or wheat, flavored with hops, a conelike flower, and fermented with yeast. Beers come in a wide range, from light to dark and from bitter to mellow. Choosing one is a matter of personal taste. Ale is a stronger version of beer, in terms of both taste and alcohol content.

Brandy is liquor distilled from wine or fermented fruit juice that is then often aged, typically in wood, which adds color and smooths out the flavor. The word brandy comes from the Dutch brandewijn , meaning burned (distilled) wine. Known for their aromatic qualities and rich fruity flavors, brandies can be made from almost any fruit. Some key varieties are:

Liqueurs are sweetened spirits flavored with different fruits, nuts, seeds, spices, herbs, and flowers. A range of liquors are used as the spirits base, including rum, brandy, and whiskey. Liqueurs are flavored by distillation, infusion, percolation, or maceration, each a different way of extracting the ingredients essence and combining them with alcohol. They range from 30-proof (15 percent) to 110-proof (55 percent). Base liquors are often added to liqueurs, and cream is added to make cream liqueurs. There are generic liqueurs like anisette and proprietary, or name-brand liqueurs, such as Sambuca; some have cream added as well. The recipes in this book call for generic brands. The ones to know are:

Unlike sweet liqueurs, liquors are alcohols made of fermented grains and/or plants, such as rum , brandy , and whiskey . Some modern liquors are flavored, but in general liquors are not sweet.

Rum is distilled sugarcane or molasses. Originally from the West Indies but now made throughout the Caribbean, rum has a thick, sweet, mellow taste that has made it a perennial favorite for baking. It comes in several versions; which one you choose depends on how rummy-tasting you like your cakes. We specify the type of rum in our recipes, but feel free to try others: