The Manliest of Cakes

Every year, I try to make my husband a birthday cake that is cooler, better, and crazier than the last. Months ago, I saw a really awesome lumberjack cake on Pinterest, and I thought to myself, "It's so incredibly Canadian. It's absolutely perfect." Derek just happened to look over at my screen (or I shoved my Kindle in his face, who's to say at this point, it was months ago), and he thought it rocked. So back in February, I committed to memory that this was *the cake* for his June birthday. When it comes to cakes, my memory is a steel trap, but I honestly couldn't tell you the name of someone I met 35 seconds ago, so my priorities are exactly where they should be. Anyway, my husband and I love Canada (our happy place), and I ADORE plaid (75% of my wardrobe are plaid shirts that sadly get no use in Florida), so much so that I even buy Derek plaid button-up shirts because 1. They make him look like a Canadian lumberjack, and 2. I find that to be incredibly attractive. I also figured a cake that looked like a tree stump and was extremely plaid on the inside was also possibly the manliest of cakes to ever exist, and I am happy to report, this is a concrete fact:

Behold, a cake fit for a rugged outdoorsman!

My husband loves being outside, hiking, camping, soaking up nature, and he ended up with a wife who, while she enjoys hiking and being outside, enjoys indoor plumbing and air conditioning way more. At least she knows how to bake? ...I tell myself that this and my own ability to also look incredibly attractive in plaid button-ups make up for these other shortcomings. At least I can *appear* like someone who is outdoorsy. This nature-themed cake is made up of 4 six-inch round red velvet cakes with chocolate Baileys buttercream frosting. How I had never thought to make chocolate Baileys buttercream before is absolutely beyond me because dear sweet Mother Nature, this is hands down the best frosting mashup I have ever had the pleasure of eating. The words "life-altering" were thrown around (in my own head), but the birthday boy absolutely enjoyed this cake, and he's not even a huge chocolate lover. But the flavor of the frosting combined with the red velvet cake was the perfect amount of decadence. Add to the fact that each little plaid square inside is the perfect fork-sized bite, and you've got a recipe for a birthday cake even people who hate nature would love. At 339 calories a slice (12 slices total), it is worth every second of walking, hiking, and forcing yourself to be outside in the summer heat to work off.

Although it will take like three solid days to make.

I made the actual cakes a week ahead of time and froze them, and it took me most of Saturday to do so since you're making 8 cake rounds essentially. The baking and cake assembly definitely take the longest--frosting and turning everything into a tree actually takes less time, so, your move, nature. To make, you need:

• 1 white cake mix
• 10 ounces diet creme soda
• 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3 egg whites

• 1 red velvet cake mix
• 10 ounces diet creme soda
• 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3 egg whites

• Red gel dye, black gel dye

Start by making the white cake mix by combining all ingredients and blending well. Add in several drops of red gel dye until the cakes are bright red. Pour 8 ounces of cake batter into one greased 6-inch round cake pan. Pour another 8 ounces of cake batter into another greased 6-inch cake round. You'll have half of this cake mix leftover..set aside because you will need it later. Clean out your mixing bowl and make your red velvet cake. I added a drop or two of red and a drop or two of black gel dye to make these rounds maroon. Then I repeated, 8 ounces of batter into a prepared 6-inch round, and 8 more ounces of batter into a fourth prepared 6-inch round. I baked all four of these rounds at 350 for 24 minutes.

Colors for reference!

Soooo much black gel dye...

While these four bake, head back over to your leftover batter. Take 8 ounces of the red velvet cake and dye it BLACK AS MY SOUL. You probably will only have about 5 ounces of red velvet batter left by now, so you can either add 3 ounces of the white cake mix we dyed red to get 8 ounces of cake or just use 8 ounces of the white cake mix, but in either case, you will also want to dye these black as night, could be none blacker level of darkness. Set aside and check on the cakes in the oven. Once those four are done, let rest in the pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes before you turn the cakes out on the cooling rack to finish cooling completely. My red velvet cakes dyed maroon--the ones that make up MOST of the cake, decided to come out of the pan super wonky. I'm not even sure how it was possible with how religiously I used Pam, so I assume this only happened because they were the two layers I needed the most, and that is how my life works.

But I digress.

I then re-prepared 4 six-inch cake pans, pouring 8 ounces of black cake into one pan, 8 ounces of black cake into another pan, and split the remaining/leftover cake batter between two pans because I desperately needed something to feelings eat after my red velvet cakes betrayed me. Bake these for another 24 minutes and follow the steps above for cooling.

This is not the bullseye on my head, life, so keep on walking!

I did some Google searching--if you make 8-inch rounds, Wilton's round cookie cutters are perfectly sized to cut the cake into the layers you need. If you use 6-inch rounds, they do not. So instead, you have to Google checkerboard cake templates until you find one with 3 circle layers and print it out to fit a 6-inch round cake. Good times. Once all of your cakes have cooled, be sure to level them all so things will fit together nicely and freeze for at least two hours (I wrapped mine in plastic wrap and froze them overnight so they would hold up when I cut them into circles). I had to chop mine down a bit since my red velvet maroon cakes left behind their bottoms in the cake pan. Now hold on to your bottoms, because here comes a photo montage!

Cut out each circle, and grab some toothpicks and a cutting board.

Take the largest circle, and place it on your cake, securing with toothpicks so it doesn't move. Again, I recommend doing this on frozen cakes so they don't fall apart.

With a sharp knife, cut along the edge of the circle template as a guide.

Then add the medium circle template on top, securing with toothpicks and using a sharp knife to cut out the center. You will not use the middle/center template circle. Repeat for all of your cakes (6 times total).

Very carefully and with the dexterity of a cat on Adderall, slide your hands under each cake and carefully remove the inner circle. Set aside on plastic wrap. Then try to remove the middle circle piece. I had some outer pieces that completely tore or broke during this process, but, don't worry, freezing and frosting WILL ensure this does not matter in the end. You should have a ton of circles like the photo above at this point.

Now, take a large outer maroon circle, place a medium black circle inside, and then place a maroon center inside of that. Repeat one more time. Then take a bright red outer circle, place a medium maroon circle inside, and place a bright red circle inside of that. Repeat once more until you have what's going on in that magical photo above. ALL of your maroon cakes will be used.

Oh look, even more leftover cake!

 So while you make 8 cake rounds total, you only end up using four once everything is cut up. You'll have black outer and center circles and red inner circles leftover. I wrapped all of my cake rounds in two layers of plastic wrap and placed each into a freezer bag. These were frozen for 5 days before I got to frosting. Freezing helped any pieces that had torn or broken apart kind of glom back together. Small miracles.

And by small miracles, I mean, thanks, Baileys!

Now is *finally* the easy part: making frosting and tree bark. For the bark, you simply need 4 ounces of dark chocolate and 4 ounces of semisweet chocolate.

Melt according to package directions, and spread out on a large square of Parchment paper with an angled spatula.

Place another sheet on top and smooth out the melted chocolate.

Roll up into a tube and secure with a rubber band. Place in the fridge to harden for 2 hours.

 While this settles, make your frosting. You need:

• 1 cup of butter at room temp
• 1 TBS vanilla
• 3 cups Swerve confectioner's sugar
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 6 TBS Baileys
• 2 TBS skim milk
• 3/4 cup of cocoa powder 
• Tan and black gel dyes

Whip the butter in the bowl of your stand mixer until fluffy, then add in the vanilla, two cups of Swerve, and 3 TBS of Baileys. Mix well, scrape the bowl, then add in the last cup of Swerve and one cup of powdered sugar. Add in the last 3 TBS of Baileys and mix well. Take out enough of your plain white Baileys frosting to top your cake with and set into a small bowl and dye a lighter tan shade. Now back at your mixing bowl with the rest of the frosting, add in the cocoa and 2 TBS of skim milk and blend well. Remove a small amount of this frosting into a bowl and dye it jet black. This is what will fill your inside layers, so you don't need a lot of frosting since the plaid "stripe" is thin. Lumberjacks, assemble!

Is what I assume lumberjacks say.

Take a maroon/black/maroon cake round, place on a cake plate, and spread a thin layer of black frosting on top:

So thin an Oreo Thin would be jealous.

 Now, top with a red/maroon/red round, spread another layer of thin black frosting, then top this with the other maroon/black/maroon cake round, giving one final layer of thin black frosting a swipe. You will top your cake with the last red/maroon/red cake.

Check that this is what you have going on or you won't be lumberjack plaid. You'll get drunken plaid instead. Or maybe tartan kilt.

Take the tan frosting, and spread a generous, thick layer of frosting on top of your cake.

Set aside a small piping bag fitted with a #3 round tip and a small amount of the plain chocolate frosting for later. Then slather a ton of chocolate frosting on the sides of your cake, smoothing out. To complete the tree look, I swiped my angled spatula up the sides of the chocolate frosting.

So anything that pokes out under your chocolate bark later looks nifty!

Then I took the world's largest serving fork and traced circles on top of my cake to give my tree stump rings.

Ah yes, making a ginormous mess.

Grab the piping bag you set aside and pipe chocolate into the divots left behind by the serving fork.

Take your angled spatula and then smooth this out repeatedly to achieve the final look of a tree's rings.

Gonna level with you, I ate about half of this.

Take your tube of chocolate and unroll. Things will break apart like they should. You can dust this with cocoa or powdered sugar to give some texture to your bark. Then simply place onto the sides of the cake so the round/curved sides are facing into the frosting. I used about 50% of my bark, so depending on your cake round size, you could be safe with 4 ounces of melted chocolate.

Either way, it looked awesome.

Pardon my thumb, I was really excited about how cool this looked.

Dead ringer for a dead tree! Place this into a cake safe and keep in the fridge so the chocolate doesn't get melty and the cake stays chilled and easier to slice until you're ready to devour it all like a good lumberjack should.

Birthday songs were sung.

Finally, the moment of truth came--blowing out candles and cutting into the cake. The whole time in my head I was thinking, "Please be plaid, please be plaid, please be plaid," and as it turns out, I was actually saying this out loud because I am nothing if not a crazy ball of anxiety.

Thank the lumberjack gods.

It's plaid! I figured if all else failed, we'd still have a really yummy cake, but I am so happy at how obnoxiously plaid this cake is inside. It's a crowning achievement in my love of Canadian-related food items (poutine is always first), but more importantly, my husband thought it was flippin' perfect. We're excitedly awaiting cake time this evening for round 2. Because although I feel like eating cake for breakfast is a perfectly reasonable thing to do on your birthday weekend, my husband is the grown adult in this situation, and since he's older, it's only appropriate. I guess I'll just go ensconce myself in plaid and wait by the fridge...this cake is definitely worth biding time for between that chocolate Baileys frosting oozing with silky deliciousness and red velvet cake that is a perfect flavor compliment to it. I could never cut it as a real lumberjack, but I can cut a lumberjack cake, so I've got that going for me. 'Til next time, my fellow eaters!

I really need to visit Canada again soon.

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.