Chocolate Amaretto Cake

This recipe comes from The Fiddlehead Cookbook  via the Fiddlehead restaurant in Juneau, Alaska, though I’m not sure the place is still there. I purchased the cookbook on a visit during an Alaskan cruise in 2007. The cookbook was published in 1991.

Here is a similar recipe, but the one I made did not use a cake mix, as many on the Internet do: https://www.cooks.com/recipe/rz3zb64n/amaretto-chocolate-cake.html

I imagine it would be a copywrite infringement to include the recipe verbatim here but let me know if there’s a way around that.  The ingredients are interesting and include mayonnaise, buttermilk, sour cream, and almond flour and it is baked in an angel food or Bundt pan, something with a hole in the middle. This cake could likely be made gluten-free using a gluten-free flour mix, but I don’t think there’s a way around the dairy. This cake is stirred by hand and I always appreciate not getting out the mixer. You’ll need a couple of hours start to finish, and that includes cooling time.

                                                   Measured ingredients & wet and dry 

Changes I made

The changes were minimal. I didn’t have buttermilk, so I used soured milk (milk and lemon juice) and I was a few tablespoons short on the amount of sour cream. The recipe calls for the top to be decorated with sliced almonds but since I didn’t have any on hand, I used crushed pistachios. I think I would consider making twice as much frosting for a thicker layer.

                                                    Into & out of the oven

Review:

·         Were the ingredients easy to find? The ingredients are easy to find, but most may not be those you always have in the house. Any grocery store should have them, though.

·         Were the directions easy to follow? The directions were well written.

·         Did it come out as expected? I haven’t had many desserts like this, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was pleased with the results.

·         How did it taste? This is a very moist chocolate cake, but the amaretto flavor was minimal.

·         Will I make it again? If I’m going to have chocolate cake, I prefer a flourless one. There are so many chocolate cake recipes that don’t call for sour cream, mayonnaise and buttermilk, though the mayo does improve moistness. If I were to make this again, I would split the cake into two layers and use some kind of filling, perhaps fruit, between them.