Scottish Whisky Cake for Best of British

Fàilte! Ciamar a tha sibh?

That’s Scottish Gaelic and means: Welcome! How are you?

Well, I really, from the heart, hope you are doing well!!!

Some ten years ago, let’s say, 15 years ago, or wait, I can’t get it correct right this minute. So, somewhere in between that time, a good friend of mine got married (I don’t need to remember his wedding date. He does and he gets in trouble if he doesn’t.).

As it comes at the wedding reception, as his friend, I had to do something to entertain the masses, OK, the bride, the groom, and the guests. Somehow I had or found or whatever this sketch, this comedy thingy. Did I tell this story before? Can’t remember either! Right, but it fits NOW!

Good! This sketch was about this man demonstrating how to bake a Scottish whisky cake, of course involving a lot of whisky. I think a whole bottle was necessary.

It goes like:

First of all check the quality of the whisky [drinking a glass of whisky]. Cream the sugar together with the butter. Check again, whether the whisky is still good [drinking a glass of whisky]. We-ell, add the eeeeeeggs [slurring the words already]. … OK, you have about a feel on how it went until the whole bottle of whisky is gone.

The only thing you need to remember now is: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!

Just follow the instructions below for preparing this cake.

I enter this post to the Best of British Challenge for July, which is themed Scotland's food. More info you find as well with Janice at Farmersgirl Kitchen and at The Face of New World Appliances and at London Unattached from Fiona.

Scottish Whisky Cake

Ingredients

For the cake batter:

250 g of butter (Gaelic: im) at room temperature

250 g of sugar (Gaelic: siùcar)

4 eggs (Gaelic: ugh)

500 g spelt flour (or 200 g + 300 g wheat flour)

15 g of baking powder

15 g vanilla extract or vanilla sugar

2 cl Sottish whisky

200 ml milk (Gaelic: bainne)

60 g white chocolate

60 g dark chocolate

For the icing:

160 g icing sugar

60 g butter at room temperature
2 tsps of honey

Juice of one lemon

2 cl Scottish whisky

Some roasted and shredded hazelnuts for decoration

Method:

Here we go. As I said you can of course skip all the whisky tasting part!

Have a round, let’s say 25 cm (±5 cm tolerance) baking tin form, prepared with butter for non stick ready to go and heat the oven up to 175°C.

Cream the sugar together with the butter. Add the four eggs (we don’t bother today with all these separating and whisking egg white and so forth). Simply whisk it together.

Sieve in the flour with the baking powder.

Before I go on talking to much, add the vanilla extract or sugar (whichever you are using), the whisky, and the milk. Well, mix well! Break the chocolate in pieces of the desired size. I like them rather more chunky. So that’s what I did then. Fold the pieces in.

Get the cake batter to the baking tin form and chuck, oops, put it gently in the middle of the oven and bake for one hour.

In between, do whatever you like. Whatever you can do with one hour. There are a lot of things, of course depending on what you like. You could use the time to clean up the mess you created by now. You could have a meal (even including preparation – depending on what you do of course). Whatever! It’s up to you and I’m not going to tell you what I did.

Once the cake is ready, remove it from the oven and let cool down for a while.

It’s time to think about the icing. Beat it all together. Give your best and make sure you don’t have any chunks of icing sugar sticking together (I forgot to think about it, no worries, though).

Let the icing flow over the cake, let the forces of nature have it’s work complete. If you feel like it, you can spread over the pieces of hazelnuts.

Even my dog, Lucy, had her part as she dressed up in her little Scottish dress for this challenge. Well, OK, right, was dressed up!

While talking about fitting music (see comments below) ... here a nice little addition I found on YouTube: