Does anyone have a recipe? My H asks for this every year, but I’ve never made it. He’s looking for the very rich, whiskey soaked cake he remembers his mom buying when he was a teenager (thinking it must be from Downy’s).
All of the recipes online call for boxed yellow cake mix, which won’t give the dense texture required for a really good cake that can hold up. I’d like something that I can make into a dozen small loaves and give out as gifts - something that will last several weeks, much like fruitcake. Doesn’t the booze preserve it?
I’m looking for more of a dense pound cake, definitely without fruit. I already Googled thoroughly and found nothing appealing - thought someone might have an old family recipe to share ;))
@Gourmetmom Why not just order one from Downey’s for your husband? Are they still available? I know I ordered some as gifts a few years ago on Amazon. I agree that the yellow cake mix isn’t going to produce the same density and texture as the original. I imagine ones you make might last six weeks from the time they’re made as long as they aren’t opened or cut. Downey’s cakes never last that long in our house!
Sorry, but in my experience Irish Christmas Cake is a fruit cake. The other one I recall a relative making used Guinness, and it also had raisins.
Maida Heatter has a recipe for Kentucky Pound cake, made with bourbon, that could easily become what you want by switching to Irish whisky. Sounds delicious–all of her recipes are great–and no fruit.
Wow, I didn’t know that our family’s dark, moist, delicious heritage fruitcake was an Irish whiskey cake (we’re not Irish). My mom recently made her annual dozen (and I helped!), and I have two of them in my pantry to feed until it’s time for them to feed us. Hic!
@Gourmetmom I thought that for this you had to start really early and feed the cake whiskey which preserves it. That is how I remember our Irish dance moms explaining. They actually had family in Ireland who had the time make them and ship them to America. I will check my Irish and British cookbooks for you for a from scratch recipe. I have more than most human beings.
“The pudding should give it a denser texture. I only use Duncan Hines if I start with a box mix.”
Plus the extra eggs. I also recommend used butter (melted or very soft un lieu of oil) and, yes, Duncan Hines is the only boxed cake mix I’ll use, the butter recipe.
I only know of 2 whiskey cake types - the dense fruitcake variety and the more cakey, pound cake style which isn’t the type you store for weeks.
@Consolation’s link for Kentucky pound cake sounds wonderful, either with bourbon or with Irish whisky. Mmm.
Do not use a cake mix for pound cake. The mix contains flour, sugar, leavener, salt and some ingredients you don’t want, and then you add the eggs and butter and mix with a mixer. If you’ve got a mixer, cream the butter and sugar yourself and then add your own flour, salt and baking powder, and whisky if you’re making a whisky-flavored cake.
I don’t think a true pound cake recipe would hold up to being soaked in rum. Not enough structural integrity. The crumb of a real pound cake is very fine, tender and soft and I think it would just dissolve under the weight of a soaking in alcohol. If you’ve ever had pound cake with macerated strawberries, for example, you’ll know what I mean.
We’ve (my mother and I) have been making the Downey’s cake from post #9 for many years (the recipe was copied from a Philly paper, is on a torn and tattered piece of paper with many years of spills on it. With the boxed cake, with the pudding. The change I make is to the pan size. If you make this in a bundt pan, it makes one really really big cake that takes a long time to cook Sometimes I make it in smaller bundtsI think I get 3 from one recipe. Sometimes I make it as little loaf pans to give as gifts. My mother makes it in a regular 9x13 if she’s making it for a party when it needs to be cut for a party. It does work better for ‘flipping’ it for the icing to be absorbed.
I also put a lot less whiskey in the icing than it calls for. Just my preference.
I really do think this is what your husband is looking for. It calls for the mix in a box, the pudding, the nuts. It is most like the rum cakes you get in the Bahamas.
I guess the Downey’s cake is what he’s looking for - I’ll try it with Duncan Hines. I’ve already made my fruitcakes and soaked them with rum, so I definitely want a fruit-less cake. How far ahead can you make it, @twoinanddone ?
I make a rum savarin (like rum babas, only it’s a large Bundt cake). It requires a yeast dough, which you bake in a mold, then soak in a ton of rum syrup. If you don’t want a yeast-based dough, I imagine any from-scratch pound cake recipe would work.
