Tipsy Kentucky Bourbon Pecan Cake with Peach Sauce
from: The Birthday Cake Book
Ingredients
For the Cake
2-3 T soft unsalted butter and 2-3 T all-purpose flour for the pan
2 1/4 C sifted cake flour
1 T plus 1/8 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
16 T (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to the consistency of mayonnaise
1 1/2 C plus 1/2 C granulated sugar
5 extra-large eggs, warmed in their shells
3 fl. oz plus 1 C sipping-quality bourbon
2 C (7 oz) toasted pecan halves
mint sprigs and leaves for decoration
For the Sauce
1/4 C fresh orange juice
1 T fresh lemon juice
4 C peeled and coarsely chopped fresh peaches (6-8) or thawed drained premium-quality frozen peach slices
Directions
This cake is best if made 1-2 days before you plan to serve. To make the cake, set your oven to 350. Brush both bottom and sides of a bundt or tube pan with butter and coat with flour. Knock off the excess. Sift the four, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter on med speed until creamy. Continue beating while sprinkling in 1 1/2 C sugar a tablespoon at a time then beat until very light. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until blended after reach, then beat until very light and creamy. Add the flour in three parts (sprinkling i over the bowl), alternating with 3 oz bourbon in two parts – beat on the lowest speed possible and just until each addition disappears. Sprinkle over the pecans and fold the batter with a large flexible rubber spatula to finish blending thoroughly. Smooth into the pan, slightly pushing the batter up against the sides and the tube.
Bake in the middle of the oven until a toothpick comes out clean from the center of the cake, 55 to 60 min. Heat 1/2 C of the bourbon and 1/4 cup of the sugar together stirring until the sugar dissolves. Pierce the top of the cake with a fork then pour the syrup evenly over the cake. Cool 15 minutes in the pan on a rack then turn out onto the rack, rumpled side up, to cool completely. When cool, heat the rest of the bourbon and sugar as before. Set the cake smooth side up, pierce as before and pour over the syrup. Wrap air-tight and set in a cool place to mellow for up to 2 days before serving.
To make the sauce, in a food processor or mixing bowl, blend the orange and lemon juices and then add the preserves and briefly blend. Turn into a bowl, add the peaches and stir gently until each slice has been moistened. Chill, tightly covered, at least 1 hour. This is at its best for about 4 hours.
To assemble the cake, just before serving, unwrap the cake and set it, smooth side up, on a platter. Plant a banner of greeting and arrange the (peach colored) candles, tucking a mint leaf or two beside each candle. Garland the bottom with branches of mint. Serve each piece of cake on a plate, encircled with peach sauce.
Happy 60th!
My beautiful mom turned 60 years young today. That sounds like a cliche made up to make people feel better about getting old, but with my mom, I feel it's especially true. I think it's her absolutely infectious laugh and kind nature (with an edge) that keep her young. She doesn't look 60 and she sure doesn't act 60!
It is a distinct privelege to have her for my mom and so amazing to watch her with Tabby … she's a wonderful wonderful grandma. To know her is to love her. Here's to many many more lovely ones, lady!! May we ALL be as vibrant, healthy and happy as you are when we're 60. Thanks so much for all you are and all you do.
Daft F*ing Hippies!! **
I had a really annoying night … though it started and ended pretty well. It was just the bit in the middle that sucked.
I was in class all day and we were set to pick up our first CSA share in Boulder (a good 30 min from our house) so we decided to eat out instead of cooking. So we picked up T from her sitter's and went to Sweet Tomatoes. It was fun as usual (I'm a huge fan of buffets with toddlers since you don't have to wait for food and decreause the likelihood of a hunger-induced meltdown). After that we headed off to The People's Republic of Boulder.
Boulder is a hard thing to get if you're not from the Denver area, probably. It's our own little slice of California. Northern, not southern. Fruits and nuts. Granola. Hippies. Green this and that. Organic. Extremely liberal, bordering on socialist. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se. That's just how it is. It brings a lot of neat stuff … like CSA. Well the CSA people we've been dealing with have been a bit flaky all along. Their phone was disconnected for quite a while. And their voicemailbox runneth over the rest of the time. Their website is down or screwy sometimes. Not the most professional operation … but what the heck. They're modern farmers not dotcommers, so we were fairly forgiving. Our share pickup was supposed to be at 19th and Violet.
We had a bit of trouble finding it. This was partly due to us misreading Google Maps … and partly due to the fact that Boulder (unlike Denver) is not laid out on a grid system and numbered streets and named streets arbitrarily change direction, change name and end for no apparent reason. This makes navigation spotty at best.
Pick-up was between 4 and 7 PM tonight. We arrived at our destination right around 6:50. No one there at all, let alone anyone who looked like they had a sack of produce for us. So basically we drove (over) an hour out of our way for NOTHING. I was not pleased. Either we were at the wrong place, or they left before we could get our share. Either way, not terribly impressed this first week. And of course, we couldn't reach them. And they still haven't called us back.
Hopefully we can get this sorted out. Otherwise, I'll be asking Discover Card to refund our $$. But at least the night has ended nicely. More Wii fit fun … and a nice run.
** This is a quote from a movie. Bonus points if you can tell me which one. Also, I harbor no ill will towards hippy Boulderites or hippies in general. So don't hate mail me, plz.
Five Things
Marisa tagged me to do this fun meme.
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.
Five facts about me:
1. I do not drink coffee. This is fairly weird for an American adult, but EXTREMELY weird for a former engineering/Comp Sci major.
2. I took over 10,000 photos last year. Only 8,000 or so of those were of Tabby. 
3. Peanut butter is my Achilles heel. Or is it cheese? Mmmmm
4. I was recently invited to my 10th high school class reunion. I have no idea how they found me. I hope no one put much effort towards it. I will not be attending.
5. I have cost Zappos approximately $500 this month in free shipping … and I have no shoes to show for it.
I'm running late, so I'll tag whoever wants to play.
Protected: Bliss List
Protected: Summer Cooking
We've got a garden!
Many many days of work (mostly by my charming husband). Pounds and pounds (double the original 1000) of dirt, mulch, manure and soil. And lots of $$ (the timber and bolts were the cheap part!). The garden is now complete. It's a big experiment. Neither of us have much experience with this.
We planted tomatoes (three varieties), squash (zucchini, pumpkin, butternut and buttercup), peppers, and some herbs, plus leftover marigolds around the edges (we hear bugs dislike them). And had a ton of fun with the sprinkler system (including driving 30 miles across town to pick up drip line that only one place in town seems to carry).
But, perhaps best of all, our backyard is now in good shape and (once we get some new chairs – Loki ate the old ones) we won't be embarrassed to take people out there (photos here). Looks like it's time for BBQ and s'mores. Just in time!
Happy summer everyone … hope you had a great memorial day weekend.
Lake! Biiiig Lake!
Soooo … the 10 days o' gardening continues. We're just completed day 7. Today was a biiiig ol' work day. We started off bright and early (10 ish). The big tasks were to get the raised bed built and the sprinkler system for the backyard all set to go. Matt monkeyed around in the backyard and found two pipes that run down our back yard (which, by the way, more like a dog run, maybe 25 ft long and 5 ft wide with a patio to the side). One pipe would turn on with a zone and the other we could not get to turn on AT ALL. Matt had theories … he wondered if some rocks we placed to keep Loki in were crushing and pinching the line. And our neighbor suggested that possibly the landscapers just laid extra line and never used it. Anyhow, Matt had cut it open to see if there was any water in there (there didn't appear to be) and since it wasn't in use, we just left it.
Umm… yea … probably shouldn't have. We went out and got dinner with my parents and when we got home the water was flowing freely and we had quite the puddle in our back yard. Turns out it's hooked up to our next door neighbor's sprinklers and when Matt cut it … went right into our back yard. Haha. So we'll be fixing that soon. Like tomorrow bright and early (ran out of daylight today). But the bed's built, the sprinklers are mostly done … hehe … and now we just have to take the 1000 or so lbs of dirt out of Matt's truck and put it in the bed. Should be cool.
Hope everyone's having a great long weekend. Bonus points if you can tell me what movie the title is a quote from.
Almost Thursday
Soooo … where's that weekend at? I am working on the world's most boring, tedious and time consuming project at work. So Friday just can't come quickly enough. Luckily I have great audio books to listen to… I'm more than halfway through Blink which is very interesting.
Things at home are still good .. still busy. More gardening today. We prepped the backyard for more work tomorrow … trimmed some bushes, tore out others, blah blah. Had to put in this photo of Ms. Tabby helping out. Matt picked out that dress-top for her and dressed her in it today … matching it with her purple sneakers and green socks.
The Wii Fit came. I've had about 30 minutes to play around with it. It's pretty interesting. I can't make up my mind yet if it's a like it or love it, but it's at least a like it. There's strength exercises, yoga poses, balance games and aerobic games. It told me I had terribly balance until Matt realized that the pad was backwards… hehe. I actually have pretty good balance apparently.
So now we're enjoying a bit of Top Chef before bed … and I must say, I don't expect to last long once my head hits the pillow!
P.S. If you have a minute, stop by and give Sammy some love.