New Year's Pink Champagne Cake

Does anything sound more appropriate than the above name? Champagne and New Years clearly go together (or if you're me, any day of the week, and preferably every day, go with champagne) Combine champagne and cake and the color pink and you have a glorious, indulgent, and dare I say, perfect, New Year's treat. Or hell, for any day. God knows I could add cake to my daily list as well the champagne!

For Christmas, my cousin Nici may have received the best gift ever from a friend: a book called Booze Cakes. I could stop right there and I know most of you are sold already. I was. We flipped through the book, found the Pink Champagne Cake, and immediately decided to make it for New Years.

Since it was going to be four of us for our New Year's celebration, I cut the recipe in half and used my super cute 6" cake rounds to make a mini cake.

There wasn't anything too difficult about this cake, but for the frosting, I had to add two more cups of powdered sugar to get it thickened enough to frost. Either there was something lost when I halved the  recipe or the recipe was wrong (either by my hand-most likely, or the publisher-let's blame it on them shall we?). In terms of mishaps, having it happen with the frosting is probably the best possible option. It was completely liquid when I was finished, so I just kept adding more sugar (a good rule of thumb!) until it thickened to the desired consistency. It was a bit (a lot!) on the sweet side though, not surprisingly. I had a photocopied page of the recipe so I may have misread the frosting recipe. At any rate however, it was a delicious cake and some how had amaretto flavor. Strange and surprising, but not unwelcome. Not sure how, but the champagne must've given it this flavor by some reaction with the rest of the ingredients or when it was baked. Seemed to fit very well with the style of the cake though. Like a pettifor.

I've since purchased the book. Not only because it has great cake recipes but because it kills two birds with one stone. The other stone being booze.

Recipe:


Cake:
3C flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1C unsalted butter
2C suga
1 tsp. vanilla
6 egg whites
few drops red food coloring
2C champagne

Frosting:
3/4C unsalted butter
4C powdered sugar
1/2C champagne
3/4C whole milk
1 Tbs. vanilla
few drops red food coloring

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans (or two 6-inch rounds and cut the recipe in half).
2. In a bowl combine flour baking soda, and salt; set aside. In a mixing bowl beat butter and sugar 3-5 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and beat in egg whites one at a time.
3. Mix in food coloring. Beat in flour mixture and champagne in three alternating additions, starting and ending with flour to prevent curdling. Pour batter in pans and bake 35 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
4. For the frosting, in a mixing bowl, beat butter 1 minutes. Gradually add powdered sugar, champagne, milk, vanilla, and food coloring; beat until smooth and creamy.
5. Once the cake has cooled completely, place bottom layer on a cake plate and spread half the frosting overtop. Add top layer and cover with frosting.


Photos by Collin Monda