A Whiskey Revelation

To me, whiskey has always tasted like burnt motor oil. The smell alone makes me gag instantly and induces a face I make that is an exact replication of an angry toddler spitting out food. But you know what? Most people love whiskey. Honey whiskey, Irish whiskey, there's like a zillion flavor varieties, all of which I steer clear of...unless I am baking a cake for a loved one that is crazy for the stuff. My stepdad adores Fireball whiskey, so I decided to make him a Father's Day dessert to show my true appreciation for everything he has helped me learn in life (with the obvious exception of teaching me how to become a whiskey connoisseur, he's been guiding me correctly since I was four). So, a peach Fireball bundt cake with Fireball butter sauce and Fireball glaze came into existence because daughters going above and beyond to make sure their fathers know how much they are loved should always begin with a booze-soaked cake. I was taught by my stepdad that dessert should be eaten often and with gusto. I am fairly certain if he had a motto, it would be, "Salad is what my food eats," so combining whiskey, butter, cake, and more whiskey seemed like the most appropriate approach to a memorable Father's Day for a man uninterested in rabbit food.

Silly rabbit, cakes are for dads!

Upon eating my first slice of this cake, I discovered that I friggin' love Fireball whiskey, so along with my superior sense of sarcasm and ability to work smarter and not harder, it appears I have also inherited this whiskey preference from my stepdad. I have never had a drop of it to drink in my entire life, but dear sweet spirit of Father's Day blessings is this stuff delicious to eat. Between the whiskey in the peach and cinnamon bundt cake, the whiskey in the peach whiskey butter, and the whiskey in the glaze, there's not an iota of this cake that isn't bursting with the flavor of Fireball, and I gotta say, it's quite a feat. The butter makes the cake insanely soft and, well, buttery, and the chunks of peach in the cake just take this over the top. Since the words "low calorie" and "sugar free" are virtually in no way synonymous with how dads eat their cake, I went with real sugar and still managed to make this bad boy for 352 calories for 12 slices. If you go with the substitutions I list below, you could knock that down to under 300 calories for 12 slices.

Ahem, I did, however, cut calorie corners in other sneaky ways.

I love a good bundt cake recipe because they are so easy to put together. Waiting for something to come out of the oven should be the hardest part of a recipe, and this definitely attests to that. To make, you need:

• 1 box of white cake mix
• 1 large box of sugar free vanilla pudding
• 1 tsp of cinnamon
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce (replaces oil)
• 3/4 cup of Fireball
• 1/4 cup of water
• 1 can of no sugar added peaches, save the juice for the sauce
• 1 TBS of flour

 Start by preheating your oven to 325 and greasing a bundt pan with like a gallon of cooking spray. Mix the cake mix, pudding, cinnamon, eggs, applesauce, Fireball, and water together in a stand mixer on medium high for 2 minutes. Prepare your peaches while this is mixing.

Drain those babies over a bowl!

 Once drained, set the juice aside for later. Cut the peaches into bite-sized pieces, then toss then in a large plastic baggie with one TBS of flour. This keeps them from sinking to the bottom of the cake.

10/10 would eat like this with a spoon.

Then, by hand, fold the diced peaches into the mixed cake batter. Once everything is nice and evenly folded, you're ready to do battle with that bundt pan.

A hint of peach!

Pour your batter into the prepared pan, smack the pan on the counter to get out any air bubbles and even out the batter. Bake for 45 minutes at 325 until a toothpick comes out of the deeper parts of the cake clean. When there's about 10 minutes left on the oven timer, it's time to make the buttery glaze. Be sure to put your cake on a cooling rack when it's done in the oven, leaving it in the pan.

Oh look, more whiskey!

The sauce comes together with:

• 1/2 cup of butter
• 1/2 cup of sugar (use 1/2 cup of Swerve granular for lower calories/sugar-free version)
• 1/4 cup of Fireball
• 1/4 cup of reserved peach juice

Melt the butter in a medium sauce pan and then whisk in the sugar, Fireball, and peach juice. Let it come to a boil, then whisk constantly for 5 minutes, until sugar is completely dissolved. I stopped whisking for 0.002 seconds to turn around and sneeze, and my sauce boiled over, creating a lovely round of "World's most sensitive smoke detector goes wild," so really pay close attention to ensure you're whisking fast enough to prevent spillage...sneeze contamination protection be damned, I guess. Now, back to that cake!

No dessert for a father should ever be considered complete if it doesn't involve tools at some point in the creation process.

Once the butter sauce has been made, take a long shish kabob skewer and stab the cake all over to give the sauce channels to run into. You will be pouring the sauce onto a hot cake, so work carefully.

The most underappreciated tool in the entire kitchen is a silicone basting brush. I dare you to disprove that.

Take a basting brush and brush the butter sauce all over the cake, ensuring it spills into all the little holes you've poked over the cake until you've run out of all of the sauce. I poured a bit, swept it with the brush, let it soak, and repeated a few times until the sauce was all gone.

Leaving a buttery wake in its path.

Do not lick the cake. You will be tempted. Let this rest for 15 minutes before taking an angled spatula and running it around the edges and center of the cake to release it from the pan.

It has a hat! Like all dads!

Take your serving plate, place it on top of the cake pan, and carefully, with pot holders or oven mits since the pan will still be warm, flip everything over so the cake is released from the pan and on to the serving plate.

Glorious.

I mean, whiskey and peach cake with whiskey and peach butter sauce...you could call it a day here because this was GORGEOUS to look at with that buttery shine, but, I asked myself, "Could you add more booze somehow?"

The answer is always yes.

The glaze really is the final touch...it had been a long time since I had used pure powdered sugar, so I honestly found it to be too sweet for my "healthyish" taste buds. For my personal cake eating, I would use half Swerve confectioner's and half powdered sugar for this glaze, but this cake was about more than me and what I like, it was about a man that has been ensuring I have everything I like and need for almost the last 30 years, so the least I could do is go full powdered sugar inferno to make the best Father's Day cake possible! For glaze:

• 2 TBS skim milk
• 1 tsp Fireball
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Once the cake is COMPLETELY COOL, whisk everything for the glaze together (there's both a lot of whisking and whiskey involved with this recipe, ironically) until you have a nice, smooth glaze. Take a spoon and drizzle glaze all over the cake.

Now it's boozy enough.

Store your cake in the fridge so the butter sauce stays thicker and the glaze doesn't get runny. You have now prepared the most whiskey-laden cake in the history of time. But trust me, it's good. Like, you're gonna go for seconds good (yep, this definitely happened). I have zero guilt because sharing a good slice of cake with a man who put up with me when I was no longer a cute child but a champion eye-rolling teenager was a good way to ensure those sanity-testing moments weren't for nothing: a daughter's love is amplified tenfold with the gifting of a good cake. 'Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Take your Fireball peach bundt cake to the next level by enjoying with a glass of actual Fireball. It will change your life.