Baking with Booze: Fireball Cinnamon Whisky Apple Cake

This photo is a cheat. Not my table, nor my cake. I’m just trying to class up my trashy booze cake post.

There is a delightful corner of the internet populated by smiley midwestern moms insisting that you start adding Fireball Cinnamon Whisky to your autumn baking.

A 1980s classic from Canada (go team!) Fireball Cinnamon Whisky is more liquid candy than it is booze. Delicious in a ‘I just ate a zillion cinnamon hearts’ kind of way, its very existence offends whisky purists, which I consider a plus. Those cheerless, brown liquor-loving pedants didn’t do Wild Cherry Jell-O shots in university and it shows.

But back to our cake. A healthy glug of alcohol mixed into the batter gives baked goods a more tender crumb (thank you, science) and Fireball brings warmth and cinnamony depth, which you can amplify by drizzling a Fireball and icing sugar glaze on top of your masterpiece. (See recipe below for exact proportions.)

Of course, if you are so inclined, and you want to spend more money, you can even DIY your own cinnamon whisky, but it’s the alchemy of turning a longtime frat house staple into an elegant dessert that’s the fun part.

And in a spooky case of synchronicity, look at this comment that I saw on The Cut’s instagram feed this week. It’s from a discussion about excessive drinking:

This tells me that the universe is practically commanding you to bake with Fireball this fall.

Here I’ve added it to a basic apple loaf cake, but according to the internet moms, you could use it to tart up a box of spice cake mix. The important thing is that you are having fun.

Fireball Apple Loaf Cake

• 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

• 3/4 tsp. salt

• 3/4 tsp. baking soda

• 2 tsp. cinnamon

• 3/4 tsp. cloves, 1/2 tsp. allspice 

• 3 eggs

• 1 cup sugar

• 1/4 cup light brown sugar plus one T molasses (I add the molasses for more depth of flavour)

• 3/4 cup neutral oil, like canola

• 2 Tbsp. Fireball

• 1 tsp. vanilla bean paste or extract

• 2 medium tart apples, grated and then steeped in 2T granulated sugar, a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and even more Fireball (one or two tablespoons)

For a glaze, mix together 1 cup icing sugar and three tablespoons of Fireball and stir until the sugar dissolves.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a loaf pan with parchment. Leave it ungreased.

2. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda and spices.

3. Grate two medium, tart peeled apples on the largest hole of the box grater and macerate in sugar, cinnamon and Fireball while preparing the other ingredients.

4. In a larger mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and sugars until mixture gets lighter in color. You can do this by hand or with a hand mixer. 

5. Whisk in oil, Fireball Cinnamon Whisky and vanilla.

6. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined. Use a spatula, as the batter becomes quite thick once you add the dry ingredients.

7. Stir in the Fireball soaked apple mixture.

8. Pour batter into the parchment-lined loaf pan and bake for 65-70 minutes depending on how hot your oven is, rotating once halfway through. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean with no crumbs clinging to it. Start checking at the 55 or 60 minute mark depending on how hot your oven runs and how obsessive you are.

9. Remove from the oven and remove the cake from the pan by lifting by the overhanging parchment (how did I live before using parchment slings?) and place on a rack to cool. You can add some of the glaze to the cake when it is still warm to let it absorb and then drizzle the remainder over the cooled cake.

Weekend Baking: Panettone Bread Pudding

A sprinkling of turbinado sugar on top of your pudding creates crunch to contrast with the soft, squidgy centre.

I always think that if I get past Christmas without gorging myself, I’ll be ok. But then comes endless January and I start baking.

A giant panettone recently sat on our kitchen counter for a few days: rich, eggy and studded with craggy chocolate chunks. And even though we kept shaving off slices throughout the day, it was so large that it appeared relatively undiminished until it got semi-stale and I got tired of looking at it.

The panettone bread pudding I made with it is a tweaked version of Nigella Lawson’s ginger jam bread pudding and it was, all modesty aside, absolutely perfect and what the British call ‘moreish’ in that you can’t stop eating it. Please try it as there is still so much winter left.

Panettone Bread Pudding

1/2 stick of butter

4 eggs

3 T granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup Sultana raisins

1/2 cup rum

Enough leftover panettone to slice and fill a 1 /12 litre casserole or baking dish (approx 10 slices)

700 ml total of milk and cream (I used 500 ml of 10% table cream with 200 ml of skim milk because that’s what we had)

1 Tbs turbinado sugar for sprinkling over top

Method

Preheat the oven to 375º F.

Gently heat up a quarter cup of raisins covered in rum on a medium low stove or microwave for a minute.

Butter a 1 1/2 quart casserole (I used an old cornflower pattern Corningware dish because it retains heat perfectly and it is a scientifically proven fact that using your mother’s old Corningware dishes makes everything taste better) and then slice a quarter of a large panettone into 1 inch thick triangular slices. You can thinly butter each slice as well to add to the richness. Don’t butter too lavishly as you can easily go overboard and you will be dotting the whole affair with butter anyway before it goes into the oven.

Into a bowl, place your cream/milk mixture along with four beaten eggs, the vanilla extract and three tablespoons of sugar and set aside.

Start placing your panettone slices standing up into your buttered baking dish. You can alternate pointy end down with pointy end up to give some texture to the top of your assembly. (If you quartered your panettone vertically before slicing you get pointy slices and if I could draw I would draw an illustration for you, but just picture cutting your panettone into giant wedges like it’s a cake.)

At this point remove your raisins from the stove where hopefully they have plumped up nicely in all that rum. Scatter them between your bread slices and on top. You want raisins all the way through this dish, not just on top.

You can also pack in any stray chunks of panettone throughout the final mix. It doesn’t have to look too tidy. It’s going to soon be drowned by the milk and egg mixture anyway. Just fill in any large gaps if you feel so inclined. This is a very loose ‘do it however you like’ recipe.

Pour the milk/cream/egg mixture over top making sure to soak ever area and then allow it a few minutes to absorb into the panettone. You can push the panettone down a bit with a clean hand to submerge it a bit if you need to.

Dot the top with a divided tablespoon of butter if you choose and then sprinkle your turbinado sugar evenly across the surface. This will add a wonderfully crunchy top to contrast with your pudding’s soft and yielding interior.

Put your (uncovered!) casserole or pudding dish on a cookie sheet, place on the centre rack of the oven and bake for 45 minutes, but do peek in starting at the 35 minute mark. If your oven heats unevenly, give your dish a 180 degree rotation after 20 minutes or so but it’s not really necessary. This is a sturdy pudding, not delicate piecrust.

Remove from the oven after 45 minutes by which time it should be nicely browned and puffed up. (Sadly though, it will sink in the centre as it cools.) I would say wait until it does cool before serving, but why? If you are only sharing it with family, then to heck with societal norms and just stand over the stove with a giant spoon and dig in while it’s still hot. Melted chocolate is the best chocolate.