Christmas Melting Snow Cake

Merry Christmas! We hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season. No matter what holiday you celebrate, this is a cake that can be celeb rated and enjoyed by all, enjoy our Melting Snow Cake. This is a spiced pound cake with a marshmallow fluff layer on the outside. This cake doesn’t get its name for any reason….it is a small cake, but is messy cake to make, so beware. If you are not feeling the messy frosting, and want something more prim looking feel free to buy a can of frosting and mixing our marshmallow fluff in with it!

Enjoy!

Ingredients: Serves about 4-6

Marshmallow Fluff:
3 egg whites room temperature
2 cups corn syrup
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cake:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan 
 2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pan 
 1 cup sugar 
 4 large eggs 
 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 
 1/2 teaspoon salt
1.5 teaspoon ground ginger
1.5 teaspoon ground clove
1.5 teaspoon cinnamon

Start by making the marshmallow fluff and preheating the oven to 350 degrees.  Pour corn syrup into the egg whites, and beat on a high speed with an electric mixer until the mixture doubles, about 5-6 minutes.  Slowly add in your powdered sugar while mixing on low. Once completely mixed, add vanilla extract. Place in fridge until ready to use.

Butter your cake pans. We used two 8 inch round pans.  Using an electric mixer on high speed, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition then add vanilla and salt.

With mixer on low, gradually add flour, and all of your spices, beating just until combined.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, about 35 minutes.

Let cool completely before you start to put the cake together. If the top of the cake is too rounded you can simply take a knife to flatten the tops off. Start by putting a layer of fluff in between the two cakes, if you are afraid of your cake sliding, then secure with toothpicks. Place second cake on top. Cover in fluff. When we made it the fluff poured all down the side because it is so heavy, so we placed in the freezer immediately for about 5 minutes.

Don’t leave in freezer for longer than 15 minutes, because it will be difficult to eat! Before serving dust with powdered sugar!

Tada!

Merry Christmas!

 

 

Holiday Spiced Rum

I first made this for Michael’s birthday last year as part of a prohibition era party I threw him, where we fermented our own liquers, made gin, and this delicacy….spiced rum. It seems only appropriate that we would yet again, make this drink during the winter month, where a warm spiced drink can warm your shivered bones, and bring a smile to your face!

This spiced rum is very simple, and is great to drink straight, and in our case we like to add a little water and warm it. Enjoy and get creative, you will figure out how you prefer to spice it!

Ingredients:
750 ml dark rum
1 vanilla bean
2 large strips of orange peel
1 cinnamon stick
4 whole cloves
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

This is such a painfully easy recipe. Basically you want to pour the rum out into a large pitcher (keep the bottle to rebottle the liquor), and put your ingredients with it. For the orange peel, use a peeler to take the skin off, just make sure that you get rid of the pith, which is the white part, the pith will make your drink bitter. With the vanilla bean, take a knife and run into down length wise to open it so all the lovely flavor can come out. Once all the ingredients are in the pitcher, place plastic wrap on top, and let sit in a cool dark area for 3 days. Once a day stir the mix, and reseal, and let sit.

After the third day, strain out all the spices, and rebottle! Now enjoy, you can spike some hot chocolate, drink warm, or on the rocks. Enjoy and be safe!