Wine Tasting

Good evening fellow lovers of sweets and spirits! My cake is now in the oven and smelling delicious! I may or may not have snuck a spoon of the yummy batter...and it tastes even better than the tester I did last week. This evening I am baking a cake for a wine tasting party that I'll be attending on Saturday...it is rather ambitious but, well, GO BIG OR GO HOME!

I began the cake shortly after Don and I got back from the gym...yes the gym. If someone is eating all these tester cakes he's got to kick things up a notch, and well, I might as well support it! The cake that I'm baking for the tasting is a dark chocolate Cabernet Sauvignon. It will have a bittersweet chocolate butter cream frosting under the fondant and I will be mixing some black cherry filling into it for the layers...more on that later.

The cake itself I am baking in a coffee can to get the desired diamater and height, and its sides and bottoms are lined with parchment paper to make it easier to slide out. It also helps so that there really arent any ridges that show up on the cake. The recipe is a simple chocolate cake recipe using Ghiradeli dark chocolate, bitter sweet cocoa powder, and 1 cup of wine. I really enjoy the Toasted Head Cabernet Sauvignon. Don got it for me once when I asked him to pick me up a good bottle of wine to roll out the fondant for his birthday cake (he thought I was nuts). He picked the Toasted Head which is a great bottle for rolling, and as it turns out was equally as delicious after I was finished. You may be asking "why in the world don't you just buy a rolling pin?" Well, that's simple...I would rather spend $9 on a bottle of wine that I can enjoy a glass or two of afterwards...what else does your rolling pin do for you??? I had just under a cup left so I added a bit of another wine I decided to try...It's called Cheap Date and was roughly $6 o $7. I have never tried it before, just liked the lable...but after adding a smidge to get to a cup for the cake I took a little sip and yummy yummy!

The first cake is about done, it takes a while longer to bake them in the coffee cans as they are much taller, but it really works great. I'll be putting the other one in after giving this one a few minutes to cool down before sliding it out. Hopefully sometime between then Don will be back with the Hawian pizza....I may just ocupy the oven every day!! haha. I will be keeping the cake in the fridge over night so that it is well cooled and you shall hear from me tomorrow when I make the frosting!

In honor of this cake go ahead....pop a cork, pour yourself a glass, or two....and slainte!!