Blue Bottle Test Recipe #2! Sold at Blue Bottle as a Brandy Cake with Arborio Rice & Almonds, this recipe is a twist on a traditional Bolognese Easter cake. It happens to be gluten-free, too.
This isn’t a recipe you can whip up on a whim, nor is it something you should serve fresh out of the oven. This is one of those recipes that improves with age – 60 hours passed between measuring my first ingredient and enjoying my first slice. I won’t go into the baking details, but it started with simmering a lemon-zest infused rice pudding for 2 hours and ended with sprinkling a few teaspoons of bourbon over the hot cake. From there, the cake gets wrapped up tightly and rests for a day to encourage flavor-mingling and moisture. If you are patient, you’ll be rewarded with a delicately flavored treat to enjoy with your morning coffee. Like the Saffron Vanilla Snickerdoodles, this is a more of a morning treat than an after dinner dessert.
I substituted the hard-to-find brandy that Blue Bottle uses with some bourbon and pecans with very happy results. This recipe is a great platform for experimentation with flavors – next time I’d use orange zest with my bourbon and pecans. Macadamia/lime/rum? Hazelnut/orange/amaretto?
5 Comments, Comment or Ping
Wow, what a time-intensive recipe…. Sounds like it’s worth the work though, with all the layers of flavor!
September 5th, 2011
I would love to try making this! Could you share the recipe?
September 7th, 2011
Unfortunately the recipe is still being tested/edited, but the Blue Bottle Cookbook should be out sometime in 2012!
September 7th, 2011
The 2+ hours of simmering lemon zest in the rice pudding part really made an amazing impact!
September 7th, 2011
Can I drive over now and have some?
November 7th, 2011
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