The Wino's Champagne Cake

It's simple, fellow boozers: The Wino loves booze. The Wino loves cake. The Wino loves to make cakes with booze.

Today, she will share her recipe for her Champagne Cake with her boozy readers. The Wino's Champagne Cake is a divine, boozy cake. It's dense and tender like a pound cake, with an intense butter and vanilla sweetness that is balanced by rich floral and yeasty champagne flavors. It is also an impressive cake to behold, with three, fat 9-inch layers and mounds of white champagne-flavored butter cream frosting.

The Wino had her first slice of champagne cake at the Kingfish Cafe in Seattle in 2002. Or was it 2003? In any case, it changed her life. Well, maybe not her entire life, but it most definitely changed her life as it related to cake. The Kingfish version of champagne cake was pure, delicious insanity. Layers and layers of white, moist, faintly boozy tasting cake slathered with gorgeous fluffy frosting that had hint of butterscotch flavor. As you may know, the size of the cake slices at the Kingfish are truly obscene. Regardless of the gargantuan size, which is far too much for any single person to consume, The Wino could not stop shoving bite after bite of that delicious champagne cake into her mouth. Her stomach hurt, but it did not matter. All that mattered was the cake and eating as much of it as possible.

Obsessed with the cake from the Kingfish (she suspects it was laced with crack), The Wino set out to find a recipe so she could make it herself. It wasn't easy. Getting the recipe from the Kingfish was out of the question. Shortly after The Wino had her first decadent slice, The chef who made the champagne cake died and took the recipe into the afterlife with her (or so the Wino heard). The Kingfish subsequently stopped including champagne cake on their desert menu. Talk about tragic!

From there, she scoured the Web. Unfortunately, many of the recipes she found involved dyeing the cake pink and serving it with marshmallows or pineapple, or both. And several recipes suggested a boxed cake mix combined with champagne. Yeah, The Wino wasn't having any of that nonsense.

Eventually, using a combination of several recipes, she came up with her own version. It is a simple recipe in terms of ingredients. However, the quantity of batter is huge, so be prepared. But an impressive cake both in flavor and in size is what makes this cake so amazing. Fellow boozers, assuming your friends aren't cake haters, The Wino promises they will be utterly wowed. Not only will you have produced a spectacularly tall layer cake, you will have combined the magical food known as "cake" with champagne, which is arguably one of the most lovely beverages on the planet. The combination, boozers, is sheer genius. Sheer genius! The recipe follows:

The Wino's Champagne Cake

- 5 1/2 cups flour
- 6 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 and 1/3 cups butter
- 3 cups sugar
- 12 egg whites
- 1 and 1/2 cup champagne or sparkling wine (an inexpensive but tasty sparkling wine or cava, such as Segura Viudas, will do nicely). You will need one bottle total to cover the cake, the frosting, and the glasses you will drink while baking the cake. The Wino does not recommend going upscale with your bubbly. The finer flavors of expensive sparklers won't be discernible.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Butter and flour three round nine inch cake pans
3. Using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together until white and fluffy
4. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
5. Add flour mixture to butter and sugar mixture alternately with champagne until incorporated. Batter will be very thick and stiff.
6. Separate egg yolks from the egg whites. Discard the yolks. In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
7. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter, in thirds.
8. Divide batter between the prepared cake pans and smooth the tops.
9. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes. Layers are done when knife inserted into center comes out clean or with a moist crumb or two.
10. Let cake layers cool for 15 minutes. Carefully remove from pans and let cool completely on a wire rack.
11. Sprinkle 1 - 4 tablespoons of champagne over the top of each layer and let it soak in. (Many thanks to Alexis, one of the purse wine ladies, for this suggestion.)

For the Frosting:

- 10 cups powdered Sugar
- 1/2 cup of butter
- 2 tsp of vanilla
- 1/2 - 3/4 cup of champagne
- Fresh Strawberries for garnishing the top of the cake (optional; recommended only if strawberries are in season)

1. Beat butter with an electric mixer until smooth
2. Add powdered sugar and champagne alternately; adjust quantities as needed. You want a spreadable consistency that is a bit on the stiff side so you have a little support for the layers.
3. Beat in vanilla
4. Divide frosting in to thirds with one of the "thirds" slightly larger than the other two. Reserve the larger portion for the top of the cake.
5. Lay the bottom layer on a plate of cake stand and frost the top. Lay the second layer on top of the first and frost the top. Put the third and final layer on top and frost only the top, piling on the remaining frosting. The Wino frosts this cake in a "rustique," fashion, piling the frosting on top of the layers but not frosting the sides. In The Wino's opinion, it has a shabby chic effect that conveys a sense of decadent abandonment. It's also a heck of a lot easier and faster than frosting the sides of the cake in a way that doesn't look like a 5 year old did it. (Come on, it's not like The Wino is a pastry chef!)
6. Garnish top of cake with strawberries (optional)
7. Serve with a glass of Champagne (optional)

There you have it, fellow boozers. A magnificent booze cake.

Enjoy!