A couple of days ago I needed to make a dessert for a potluck lunch at work, and the cupboards were a little bare; I looked for a recipe that I could make with what I had on hand. I recently got a copy of All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray, and her "Naughty Senator" cake fit the bill. It's a peppermint and chocolate rum marble Bundt cake, and I had all of the ingredients available (okay, I didn't have any milk, but I figured that some half and half would do nicely).
You make the base batter for this cake by creaming butter and sugar; adding eggs; and alternately mixing in the dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, salt) and milk (or, in my case, half and half). You divide the batter in half, adding peppermint extract and green food coloring to one part, and cocoa powder, sugar, and rum to the other. You layer the two batters in a greased Bundt pan and marble them together before baking.
.JPG)
I had buttered my Bundt pan (which is non-stick) before baking, but it took quite a bit of effort to release the cooled cake. Fortunately, it all came out in one piece, but I wish that I had floured the pan as well. Then brown and pastel green color scheme of the cake screams "chocolate mint!" But it's somewhat misleading, because the flavor was mostly just minty. I couldn't taste the rum at all, and the chocolate flavor was pretty faint; there is only one-quarter cup of cocoa powder in the chocolate batter.
That said, I did really enjoy this cake. It was very moist, soft, and finely textured. And I found the mint quite light and refreshing. But the visual impact is more memorable than the taste.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the odd name of the cake, Melissa Gray says that she was trying to come up with a good combination of flavors for a marble cake around the time that Senator Larry Craig was arrested at the Minneapolis airport (and that incident was followed shortly by the disclosure that Senator David Vitter's telephone number was in the records of the "D.C. Madam"). So the idea of a naughty senator was on Gray's mind when she developed this recipe; the rum is a nod to debauchery.
The last thing I want to associate with a cake is someone's "wide stance," but I do appreciate that the name of the cake, just like the unusual green color, definitely makes an impression!
Recipe: "The Naughty Senator" from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray.
Previous Post: "Marble Madness (Buttercake Bakery Marble Cake)," June 17, 2008.
You make the base batter for this cake by creaming butter and sugar; adding eggs; and alternately mixing in the dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, salt) and milk (or, in my case, half and half). You divide the batter in half, adding peppermint extract and green food coloring to one part, and cocoa powder, sugar, and rum to the other. You layer the two batters in a greased Bundt pan and marble them together before baking.
That said, I did really enjoy this cake. It was very moist, soft, and finely textured. And I found the mint quite light and refreshing. But the visual impact is more memorable than the taste.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the odd name of the cake, Melissa Gray says that she was trying to come up with a good combination of flavors for a marble cake around the time that Senator Larry Craig was arrested at the Minneapolis airport (and that incident was followed shortly by the disclosure that Senator David Vitter's telephone number was in the records of the "D.C. Madam"). So the idea of a naughty senator was on Gray's mind when she developed this recipe; the rum is a nod to debauchery.
The last thing I want to associate with a cake is someone's "wide stance," but I do appreciate that the name of the cake, just like the unusual green color, definitely makes an impression!
Recipe: "The Naughty Senator" from All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray.
Previous Post: "Marble Madness (Buttercake Bakery Marble Cake)," June 17, 2008.
Comments