Monday 18 June 2012

Scottish Whisky Cake for Best of British

Fàilte! Ciamar a tha sibh?
That’s Scottish Gaelic and means: Welcome! How are you?
Well, I really, from the heart, hope you are doing well!!!


Some ten years ago, let’s say, 15 years ago, or wait, I can’t get it correct right this minute. So, somewhere in between that time, a good friend of mine got married (I don’t need to remember his wedding date. He does and he gets in trouble if he doesn’t.).
As it comes at the wedding reception, as his friend, I had to do something to entertain the masses, OK, the bride, the groom, and the guests. Somehow I had or found or whatever this sketch, this comedy thingy. Did I tell this story before? Can’t remember either! Right, but it fits NOW!
Good! This sketch was about this man demonstrating how to bake a Scottish whisky cake, of course involving a lot of whisky. I think a whole bottle was necessary.
It goes like:
First of all check the quality of the whisky [drinking a glass of whisky]. Cream the sugar together with the butter. Check again, whether the whisky is still good [drinking a glass of whisky]. We-ell, add the eeeeeeggs [slurring the words already]. … OK, you have about a feel on how it went until the whole bottle of whisky is gone.
The only thing you need to remember now is: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!
Just follow the instructions below for preparing this cake.
I enter this post to the Best of British Challenge for July, which is themed Scotland's food. More info you find as well with Janice at Farmersgirl Kitchen and at The Face of New World Appliances and at London Unattached from Fiona.


Scottish Whisky Cake

Ingredients
For the cake batter:
250 g of butter (Gaelic: im) at room temperature
250 g of sugar (Gaelic: siùcar)
4 eggs (Gaelic: ugh)
500 g spelt flour (or 200 g + 300 g wheat flour)
15 g of baking powder
15 g vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
2 cl Sottish whisky
200 ml milk (Gaelic: bainne)
60 g white chocolate
60 g dark chocolate

For the icing:
160 g icing sugar
60 g butter at room temperature
2 tsps of honey
Juice of one lemon
2 cl Scottish whisky
Some roasted and shredded hazelnuts for decoration

Method:
Here we go. As I said you can of course skip all the whisky tasting part!
Have a round, let’s say 25 cm (±5 cm tolerance) baking tin form, prepared with butter for non stick ready to go and heat the oven up to 175°C.
Cream the sugar together with the butter. Add the four eggs (we don’t bother today with all these separating and whisking egg white and so forth). Simply whisk it together.
Sieve in the flour with the baking powder.
Before I go on talking to much, add the vanilla extract or sugar (whichever you are using), the whisky, and the milk. Well, mix well! Break the chocolate in pieces of the desired size. I like them rather more chunky. So that’s what I did then. Fold the pieces in.
Get the cake batter to the baking tin form and chuck, oops, put it gently in the middle of the oven and bake for one hour.
In between, do whatever you like. Whatever you can do with one hour. There are a lot of things, of course depending on what you like. You could use the time to clean up the mess you created by now. You could have a meal (even including preparation – depending on what you do of course). Whatever! It’s up to you and I’m not going to tell you what I did.
Once the cake is ready, remove it from the oven and let cool down for a while.
It’s time to think about the icing. Beat it all together. Give your best and make sure you don’t have any chunks of icing sugar sticking together (I forgot to think about it, no worries, though).


Let the icing flow over the cake, let the forces of nature have it’s work complete. If you feel like it, you can spread over the pieces of hazelnuts.


Even my dog, Lucy, had her part as she dressed up in her little Scottish dress for this challenge. Well, OK, right, was dressed up!

While talking about fitting music (see comments below) ... here a nice little addition I found on YouTube:

 

10 comments:

  1. Lovely recipe and cake and I love Lucy's costume she really looks the part. x

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    1. Thank you very much! Well, normally this costume is just for winter so that not all the snow keeps sticking to her fur. I made sure, though, she didn't need to wear it longer the necessary today. And, of course, she was sufficiently "paid" for her services. Food works for her as well, although she didn't get any parts of the cake.

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  2. Fantastic, thanks for taking part in the Scottish section of Best of British. Lang may your lum reek!

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    1. Tapad leibh!
      Long I was thinking, what I could do to enter this month. Had already in mind twisting some good old shortbread ... and suddenly those memories came back!
      (Oh, it happens there is coming fitting music from my speakers at the moment. What a shame, you can't hear it!)

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  3. Funny I can't drink whisky but put it in a cake and I'm fine. Love the addition of hazelnuts too.

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    Replies
    1. Well, yes, you don't feel the whisky too much here (only if you put a lot more). Hm, could have tossed even more of them hazelnuts on!

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  4. Chris, looks like you had almost too much fun making this cake. Great effort. Your dog Lucy looks so cute too :-)

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    Replies
    1. Almost! Sometimes you can get carried away. You see, I even made an exception with baking during the week.
      Thank you, Jacqueline!

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  5. It looks as if you had a great time making this cake and Lucy does look cute in her outfit. I've copied your recipe since I think that I'm going to have to make it since I like both chocolate and whisky!

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    Replies
    1. Here you go! So you have already two good reasons.
      The third one maybe would be: Because it will taste luvly!

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