My name is Lindsay and I have a problem. Apparently I only bake alcoholic cakes. For the last year at least, every cake I’ve made has been tipsy. Kirsch and beer and bourbon, oh my! It was only a matter of time before I started hitting the red wine.
For Taylor’s birthday this year, as usual, he requested “chocolate cake, just a good, moist chocolate cake.” You’d think he’d know by now that there’s no way I’m going to make him “just” a chocolate cake. But chocolate as a starting point? That I can definitely work with. For a while now I’ve been eying this bottle of blackberry wine. A sticky sweet wine made locally here in Tennessee. It’s not exactly the kind of wine you pour and have a glass or two with dinner. Way too sweet for that. It’s practically fruit juice. Highly alcoholic fruit juice. I felt that wine was destined for something more. Simply swapping the typical black coffee in a classic chocolate cake recipe with the dark and fruity spirit produced a decadently moist chocolate cake unlike anything I’ve ever had before. Subtle notes of fruit came through the rich dark chocolate, tantalizing the palette without screaming “Hey! Look at me, I’m filled with wine!” Layered with blackberry preserves and whipped vanilla buttercream, and topped with a dramatic chocolate ganache drizzle, this definitely isn’t just another chocolate cake.
Looking at these photos now, I should have been more ambitious with the drizzle. I guess I was afraid the chocolate would cascade down the entire side of the cake, overflowing onto the cake stand and the table below (read: mess). While I was going for glamorous, I think what I ended up with was a bit more sanguine. Vampire-esque almost. And kind of creepy. But delicious. Oh. So. Delicious.
Total Time: 3 hours
