Chocolate Whiskey Layer Cake with Irish Creme Frosting

I know what you’re thinking, especially if you follow this blog with any kind of regularity: Kris, where hast thou gone? My only (poor, to be frank) excuses involve a new job, a constant stream of visitors, so on and so forth… so I won’t bore you with any of them. You, my friend, are not here for idle chit-chat. You are here for cake! Or perhaps recipes, and possibly cake? Let’s backtrack a little, shall we? A certain friend of mine from San Francisco that shall remain nameless–you know who you are!–is quite crazy about cake, despite her normal lack of love for desserts. To make a long story short, I promised her that if ever she came down to LA to visit me… there would be cake with her name on it. So where’s her name? It’s a little more subtle than that. She can drink me under the table in mere minutes; mere mortals dream of having her tolerance for whiskey. Therefore, I figured the best way to personalize this cake for her was to make said cake as alcoholic as tastefully possible. Ta-dah! Two shots of Crown Royal and one shot of Bailey’s swim in a delicious chocolate/cream cheese dream of cake. Yes, you can definitely taste the alcohol in each bite. Is it jarring? Well… not if you like whiskey as much as we do 🙂 The best part about this cake is its not-quite-sweetness. It’s chocolate-y without being cloyingly sweet–thanks to the inclusion of freshly-brewed coffee and use of cocoa powder as opposed to chocolate chips or bars. I loved the inclusion of black pepper and cloves–it complimented the honeyed tang of the whiskey that you faintly detect in the cake. And the cream cheese paired with Bailey’s Irish Cream is a match made in heaven; the soft sourness of the cream cheese goes very well with the milky-sweet Bailey’s. Don’t worry about how liquid the cake batter is when you pour it into the cake pan–it will solidify into a moist, rich cake during the bake time. I would highly recommend you take the baking time in the recipe as more of a suggestion than the rule as well; everyone’s oven is different and cake can be so finicky! Start out with 35 minutes, then start using a toothpick through the center to test for doneness. The tops of the cakes may crack, but that’s okay–that’s what frosting is for! Just make sure that you allow the pans to mostly cool before removing the layers; since the cake is very moist, it’s also delicate and will break off if too much force is applied. The original recipe is for a 9-inch springform pan, but I dressed it up as a layer cake to pair it with the cream cheese frosting. I used 2 6-inch round layers to create a 4-layer cake, and ended up with a bit more batter to spare. Since there is a decent amount of batter leftover, you could always fill a coffee mug halfway with it and microwave it for a minute and a half for instant chocolate cake… which is a terrible, terrible idea, and I definitely did NOT do that. (I totally did, and it was awesome.) She loved the cake, and has since emailed me to tell me how much she misses it since she couldn’t smuggle it on the plane at the end of the weekend. If you’re willing to put some time into creating it, I just know you’ll have the same reactions! Good luck! Original recipe from The New York Times.