TWD: CHOCOLATE WHISKEY CAKE

When I saw this week's chosen TWD recipe: Chocolate Armagnac Cake, I was a bit disappointed; from the name alone. You see, I'm not much of an alcohol drinker and I've always tried to separate liquor from baking for this very reason. I still needed to thumb through Dorie's book to figure out which cake this was, visually. While I always learned not to judge a book by it's cover, this rule clearly didn't apply to this weeks recipe. Once I saw a picture of the cake, I was sold; alcohol or not, I was in.

I did make a few minor changes. Instead of using Armagnac which I didn't feel like purchasing, I went with whiskey and raisins. Dorie offers up a "playing around" section for each of her recipes and the whiskey and raisins were one of her suggestions. I took 1/2 cup of raisins + 1/4 cup of whiskey and put them in an air tight glass jar for a couple hours--rotating the jar every hour. These whiskey-soaked raisins were then added to the batter at the end. I baked these in an 8X8 square pan rather than the suggested 9inch spring form and cut them into bars. The chocolate ganache topping was to die for. These tasted best the day after baking as the chocolate and raisins really settled in. I would definitely make this again, perhaps with the Armagnac next time. Check out Lyb's blog for the recipe!