The first Pecan Bourbon Chocolate Cake came around Fat Tuesday, at the onset of Lent. Although certainly not Catholic, I love Lent. I love the idea that you can give up something for a while with an option to maybe pick it up later. If you can get along without it for 40 days and 40 nights, do you really need it at all? One year someone I know applied this principle to her soon-to-be-ex husband. This year friends gave up alcohol, chocolate, even coffee. I went without all sugar except that associated with chocolate cake.
If you enjoy bourbon and chocolate, this may be your favorite cake. It's one of mine. The first cake went as exactly to Michelle Urvater's recipe as possible. It was phenomenal: intense, rich, overtly smelling of bourbon both during the baking and after. It was jaw-droppingly expensive to make, requiring 2 cups of "good bourbon" and a full pound of pecans. This recipe also uses 2 pounds of brown sugar, so it is, as you have guessed, a huge cake. I adjusted baking time and made it in my bundt pan with cupcakes on the side, but this is no cake for kids.
Cake # 13 - Another night, another version of Pecan Bourbon Chocolate Cake. On this sloshy, cold and wet, almost spring night, I set off for home anticipating the warm comfort of baking. My first husband asked for "that bourbon cake", which seems to be his favorite, and I thought the ingredients were in the house, so why not?
Arriving home and beginning baking, I immediately saw some ingredients were a little short. I was down to my last cup of bourbon. Where
did that stuff go? Also the pecan stash had dwindled to 5 ounces. Therefore, cake #13 deviates wildly from the original recipe. For the second cup of bourbon I used Petron brand orange liqueur. To fill in for missing pecans, 10.5 ounces of Ghirrardelle's 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips. Again, an enormous amount of cake batter, plenty for a bundt and two snack sized cakes. The snack cakes went by mail to my son in that dark coastal city and to my dad in a large southern state, who appreciates good bourbon and loves cake. I'm very fond of this new version, and so were the many people who got to eat it because there was so much of it. Even my mom, who has no interest whatsoever in sweets, said it was really good cake.
Cake #16, third bourbon cake, whereupon I learn this is
not bourbon. Again baked by request; used second version entirely, with one small change. What if this cake could be more about chocolate and alcohol and less about sugar? Used 1 1/2 pounds of sugar rather than the prescribed 2. This is my preferred version of Pecan Bourbon Chocolate Cake.
Except there's no bourbon in mine. I thought Southern Comfort
was a bourbon whiskey. So did the liquor store man. A former bartender with a business degree, who usually knows everything about everything alcoholic, he did sell me Southern Comfort when I asked for "good bourbon". Until the 100 cake project, I rarely had occasion to purchase any whiskey, bourbon or otherwise, and when I did buy bourbon, I always chose Southern Comfort in tribute to Janus Joplin. Turns out, according to meticulous internet research, Southern Comfort is
not bourbon at all. Southern Comfort is a liqueur
similar to whiskey, created
by M.W. Heron in New Orleans over 100 years ago. So these bourbon cakes, when I make them, are not bourbon cakes at all. They are Southern Comfort Pecan Chocolate Cakes.
