September 5th, 2011
Bourbon Cake with Arborio Rice & Pecans
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?
