Ugly Sweater

Orange Cardamom Fruitcake ft. Eggnog Frosting + Sugar Cookie Crust

Last cake of the year and it's a doozy. I had handfuls of ideas for holiday-themed cakes this year - which were unfortunately moved to the backburner when we decided to move to a new apartment in December. Nevertheless, these cake brainstorms (cakestorms?) are still simmering away on that backburner and like food from the crockpot, they will someday make their delicious slow-cooked appearances - save for this one which is right here, right now.

If there was going to be one cake this holiday season, it had to be the Ugly Sweater remix. Ugly Sweaters run rampant through the holiday party circuit and it's now socially acceptable for everyone to have one of these skeletons in their closet (otherwise it's off to the thrift store to purchase yours).

This recipe is a bit intense and time-consuming, but also combines everything that is beloved and stereotypical about holiday parties - sugar cookies, eggnog, ugly sweaters and the most undesirable dessert of them all - the fruitcake. For whatever reason, the fruitcake has become the butt of many door-stopping and cake-tossing jokes, but if you load it with the fruits (and booze) you enjoy, no one will dare think of re-gifting or lobbing this one anytime soon.

orange cardamom fruitcake
1 box spice cake mix
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp allspice
dash of salt
5 eggs
1/2 stick (4 tbsp) butter, softened
1/4 c. vegetable oil
1/3 c. orange juice (or rum)
1 c. toasted walnuts + pecans, chopped
1 c. dried cranberries
1/2 c. candied orange peel
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Preheat oven to 250 degrees F and grease pans with butter or a non-stick spray like PAM. In a large bowl, sift cake mix, cinnamon, ground cardamom, allspice, and salt until well mixed. In another bowl, beat eggs, oil, orange juice (or rum), and butter until smooth. Fold in chopped nuts, cranberries, and candied orange peel. Slowly add in dry mixture, beating well after each addition - batter will be stiff.

Spoon batter into greased 8” round pans. Place pan of water (about 2-3 cups) on the lowest oven rack (this will help keep the cake moist while baking) and place pan with batter on an upper rack. Bake for 2 hours or until toothpick comes out clean. Let cool for an hour in the pan, then remove cake and let cool on a cooling rack for another hour. Wrap cake in Saran wrap and aluminum and let refrigerate for 24 hours to let cake firm up.

eggnog frosting
4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 c. butter or shortening*
1 tbsp bourbon
5-6 tbsp eggnog, prepared
dash of salt
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Beat shortening, bourbon, eggnog, and salt on low speed until smooth. Slowly add in sugar and beat on high speed until frosting forms. Add more eggnog or bourbon if frosting is too thick.

sugar cookie crust
1 c. sugar cookie crumbs
butter, melted
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease 8" pan (or same size as the fruitcake) with butter or non-stick spray. Crush sugar cookies into fine crumbs with a food processor or a rolling pin. Heat butter in microwave or stovetop until melted. In a small bowl, mix melted butter and cookie crumbs until sticky. Press cookie mixture into pan as a thin layer (ideally 1/2-3/4" thick) and bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool completely, and carefully remove cookie crust (more like a disc) from pan.

assembly
8" round fruitcake
4-6 cups of eggnog frosting
8" cookie 'crust'
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Fix cookie crust to plate or cakeboard with a dab of frosting. On top of cookie, outline and fill a ring of frosting (about 1/2-1" thick) and top with fruitcake. Crumbcoat this structure with a thin layer of frosting and refrigerate before decorating.

Jessica Hische

Lemon Whiskey Cake ft. Root Beer Frosting + Kettlecorn Garland

Never have I ever used a cake to suck up to someone... until now.

Enter Jessica Hische - famed letterer, proclaimed whiskey drinker, and avid procrastiworker - who also has as many side projects on the Internet as I have fingers on my hands. Last year I read a Method & Craft interview w/ Jessica and loved how articulate and well-spoken she came across, and this point is further proven with every interview and design talk I have listened to since then. She is extremely quotable and has penned pieces about everything from freelance compensation to becoming an accidental hipster.

To me, the greatest example of this is her Daily Drop Cap project which she began as she transitioned from a full-time paid position to being a freelance designer. The idea was to have some sort of regular routine during the ups and downs of freelancing, and to also create her own body of inspired work and maybe begin to make a name for herself. And that it did - Jessica herself says this side project 'catapulted' her into the design scene and even if people first heard of her as 'that daily drop cap girl,' they certainly know her by name now.

Well, dig a little deeper and you'll find that Jessica has another 'side project' called The Internet Sends Me Cake. She says it started out as almost a joke among her studiomates, that she was frequently asked to promote other designers' work to her large following and that she could create an equal-opportunity site exchanging portfolio links for homemade cakes.

Which brings us to today's cake remix. Jessica writes that she prefers lemon cake, enjoys Kettlecorn, and has been known to put whiskey in her root beer. BOOM, remix. With the recipe out of the way, the graphics needed to match the graphic designer and just a quick scroll through her portfolio will give you a pretty good idea of her lettering style. The 'J' and 'H' are based on versions of her own Drop Caps and while I myself am not a swirly embellisher, I can curly-cue and loop-di-loop when the occasion calls for it.

So without further ado, the Jessica Hische Remix:

lemon whiskey cake
1 box lemon cake mix
5 eggs
1 c. whiskey
1/4 c. vegetable oil
1/3 c. cold water
1-2 tbsp. squeezed lemon juice
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, grease pan with butter or a non-stick spray like PAM. In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs, oil, whiskey, water, and lemon juice until smooth. Slowly add in cake mix, beating well after each addition. Pour batter into greased 8” round pans and bake according to times on the back of the box.

whiskey root beer frosting
1/4 c. butter
4 c. powdered sugar
1 tbsp. whiskey
5-6 tbsp. root beer
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Beat butter, root beer, and whiskey on low speed until smooth. Slowly add in sugar and beat on high speed until frosting forms. Add gel food coloring for orange frosting.

kettlecorn garland
kettlecorn
thread
needle
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Thread needle, knot the end, and string kettlecorn piece by piece, sliding to the end of the thread. Drape around cake as a garland.

Stumpkin

Chocolate Oatmeal Stout Cake ft. Pumpkin Ale Frosting + Dark Chocolate Malt Ganache

Starbucks had its moment in the spotlight, but now it's time for another fall-drink-based cake - may I introduce to you, the Stumpkin (the drink), courtesy of Heartland Brewery in New York City. Equal parts Farmer John's Oatmeal Stout and Smiling Pumpkin Ale, this mixed beer concoction combines the hearty roasted chocolate flavor of the stout with the sweet spicy body of the pumpkin ale (do I sound like a beer connoisseur yet?)

I'm a fan of the version that comes in a pint glass, so that can only mean one thing - if you can drink it, you can bake it. Thanks to some home-brewing friends, several Sam Adams brewery tours over the years, and the Internet, I am somewhat aware of how beer is made. The overly-simplified process (and don't hold me to it) goes something like: barley grains are steeped (soaked in water) and kilned (dried in an oven) to become malt (fermentable sugars), the malt mash solution is boiled with hops for seasoning (bitterness to balance the sweeter malt flavors) and yeast is added to begin fermentation, which releases carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol during several weeks of conditioning. Then, beer.

Of course the real process is more complex than that, but just knowing those steps gave me enough material to translate into a cake. I recommend starting with a dark chocolate cake mix (though chocolate is fine too), and you'll need an oatmeal stout and a pumpkin ale as well (feel free to drink the remainder throughout the brewing, er, baking process). The Stumpkin cake is rich without being too sweet, due to the dark chocolate in the ganache and the smooth dark beers in the cake and frosting.

The key ingredient (in my opinion) - which is optional (depending on if you can/wish to purchase malt from a homebrew store or the Internet) - is the ground malt powder made from roasted barley grain. I bought a pound of this chocolate rye malt, soaked it in water, roasted it in the toaster oven, and then ground it into a fine powder with a blender (or food processor).

This mimics the process of malting in the actual brewing process at a much smaller scale - the point is to release the smoky roasted flavors of the grains. The picture below shows that the 'powder' looks a bit more like dirt than a fine sugar, but it really adds an earthiness to the stout cake and grittiness to the dark chocolate ganache. The malt is completely optional but if you choose to make it, I would add 1 tablespoon into the cake mix and then 1-2 tablespoons into the ganache recipe.

chocolate oatmeal stout cake
1 box dark chocolate cake mix
1-1/4 c. oatmeal stout
2 tbsp pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 tbsp roasted malt powder (see below)
1/4 c. vegetable oil
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, grease pan with butter or a non-stick spray like PAM. In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs, oil, oatmeal stout, and pumpkin puree until smooth. Slowly add in cake mix and malt powder, beating well after each addition. Pour batter into greased 8” round pans and bake according to times on the back of the box.

pumpkin ale frosting
1/4 c. shortening
4 c. confectioners sugar
3 tbsp. heavy cream
1 tbsp pumpkin puree
2 tbsp pumpkin beer or ale
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin spice
orange food coloring (optional)
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Beat shortening, cream, pumpkin puree, pumpkin ale, cinnamon, and pumpkin spice on low speed until smooth. Slowly add in sugar and beat on high speed until frosting forms. Add gel food coloring for orange frosting.

dark chocolate malt ganache
10 oz. dark chocolate / semi-sweet chocolate chips, chopped
1 cup heavy cream
1-2 tbsp. roasted malt powder (see below)
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In a small saucepan on the stovetop, bring cream and malt powder (see below) to a boil. Remove from heat, added in chopped chocolate, and whisk mixture until blended. Let cool and thicken without hardening. Spread onto frosted cake, letting colors blend together.

roasted malt powder
1 c. chocolate barley malt
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Soak barley grains in a bowl of water for 1 hour. Spray baking sheet with nonstick spray and spread wet grains in a thin layer onto the sheet. Roast in oven or toaster oven for 1 hour at 400 degrees F, stirring every once in awhile so grains do not start to burn (your oven may also become smoky as the water releases). Let grains cool and then use a blender or food processor to grind the grains into a fine powder.