Chateau Gateau

After about a month on the road, I’m finally back in my kitchen! I’m only here for about 3 days before I’m off again, but it was still nice to be able to bake something. My colleague’s birthday was on January 3rd, and I’m trying to catch up on my birthday baking. I saw this Bourbon Butterscotch cake in the Layered Cookbook a while ago, and thought this was a perfect opportunity to try it out – I’ve always been a huge butterscotch fan, but never had actually made any.

I basically made this cake exactly as it was in the book, and it turned out really well. The cakes had a very nice texture, and everybody loved the butterscotch drizzle. It makes a lot of extra butterscotch, so I served the cake with ice cream as well.

Full recipe below from Layered 

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BOURBON CAKE 

INGREDIENTS

• 295 g cake flour
• 1.5 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 170 g unsalted butter, softened
• 150 g granulated sugar
• 140 g brown sugar
• 5 g vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• 250 g buttermilk
• 60 g bourbon (I used Bulleit)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease 3 x 6″ cake pans.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg into a bowl. Set aside.
3. In a stand mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Add in the sugars and mix on medium until butter is light and fluffy.
4. At medium speed, add in the vanilla, and the eggs (one at a time). Mix thoroughly.
5. At low speed, alternate adding in the dry ingredients and the buttermilk, starting and ending with the dry ingredients.
6. Mix in the bourbon, being careful to not over mix.
7. Divide the batter between the pans (I use a scale) and bake for ~25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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BOURBON BUTTERSCOTCH

INGREDIENTS

• 80 g unsalted butter
• 165 g brown sugar
• 1 tsp. corn syrup (I used golden syrup)
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 65 g whipping cream
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp. bourbon

DIRECTIONS

1. Melt the butter over low heat.
2. Stir in the brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt. Raise to medium heat, and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.
3. Remove the pan from heat. While continuously stirring, pour the cream into the mixture in a thin stream. Place the pan back on low heat, and stir for about 8 minutes.
4. Stir in the bourbon, and remove the pan from heat. Set aside.

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BUTTERSCOTCH BUTTERCREAM ICING

INGREDIENTS

• 160 g egg whites
• 150 g granulated sugar
• 454 g unsalted butter, cubed, softened
• 120 mL bourbon butterscotch

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix the egg whites and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer until sugar is dissolved. Heat the mixture in a bain-marie while stirring, until the mixture reaches 72 C.
2. Remove from heat, and whip at high speed (using the whisk attachment) in your stand mixer.
3. Once the mixture forms stiff peaks, switch to the paddle attachment, and add in the cubes of butter one by one at a low speed.
4. Switch to medium speed and mix until the icing is glossy.
5. Add in the bourbon butterscotch and mix well.

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The rest was pretty straightforward. Level cakes. Ice. Drizzle butterscotch. Eat.