Jameson Whiskey Cake

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Paddy Cake!

We stayed in Wexford in a big old farmhouse over New Years and Lu's birthday. Lu and I are kind of fans of naff 70s decor, which is just as well because the whole place looked like the house from Father Ted, In fact, I was watching Father Ted recently and Mrs Doyle has the EXACT same ceramic dogs as were in this place.

Anyway, I digress...
On the night before new years, which is Lu's birthday, we cooked a meal for 12 people and one of our guests, Camille, who had just arrived from the USA that day, produced the most delicious whiskey cake all the way from DC for dessert/birthday cake.

Here is Lu blowing out the candles on the original version We thought it would be the perfect thing to make for Paddy's day so after some advice from Camille I decided to merge the earlier ginger cake recipe from Nigel Slater with the recipe Camille gave me. It produced a heavier cake that really soaks up the booze. Its different to the original recipe, but its still pretty good, as anything that contains a whole shoulder of whiskey is bound to be! Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

300g self-raising flour

1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda

a pinch of salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 teaspoon allspice

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

200g golden syrup

125g butter

1/2 cup Jameson whiskey

100g chopped walnuts

125g dark muscavado sugar

2 large eggs

240ml milk

For the glaze

1 cup jameson whiskey

4 oz butter

1 tbsp water

2 oz sugar

Sift the flour, bicarb, salt and spices into a bowl. In a saucepan melt the syrup with the butter and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Add in the whiskey. It will bubble madly. Add this all to the flour and stir well. mix the milk with the eggs and whisk. Then add this into the four mixture. It will look quite sloppy but it will be ok! Pour this into a grease cake tin and bake at gas 3/160c for about 40 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, combine all the glaze ingredients in a saucepan and melt until the sugar has dissolved. When the cake comes out of the oven and is still hot, pour 1/3 of the glaze over it. Allow the cake to cool and turn it out of the cake tin on to a plate. Pour a further 1/3 of the glaze over the underside of the cake. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate the cake for 2 - 3 days. When you are ready to serve, take the cake out of the fridge so that it can come back up to room temperature. Then gently heat the remaining glaze before pouring it over the cake and serving!!

Deicio! Our cake tin even is slightly reminiscent of a shamrock! Cant wait till tomorrow so we can eat it!

Thanks Camille