Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day and we will be celebrating with a dinner of home-cured corned beef and colcannon. I wanted to make something special for dessert, so I whipped up a Dark Chocolate Whiskey Cake. The cake is rich, fudgy and almost brownie like. The whiskey flavor in it is distinctive, but mellow not harsh.

I want the presentation to be as fun as the cake is tasty. Then I realized it would be easy to make small shamrock shaped cakes using a heart cookie cutter that I already had.

Dark Chocolate Whiskey Cake

1/2 c (4 oz) unsalted butter
1/4 c Hersey’s Special Dark Cocoa (or other Dutch processed cocoa)
6 T Irish Whiskey
1 c white sugar
1 egg
1 T vanilla
1/4 c buttermilk (or if you don’t have buttermilk, mix a little lemon juice into regular milk)
1 c all-purpose flour
1/4 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1/8 t salt

whipped cream
green food coloring

Preheat oven to 350 F. Prepare a round 8″ cake pan by greasing and flouring it well. (If you are picky about this type of thing you can dust it with cocoa instead of flour.)

In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Whisk in the cocoa until smooth. Whisk in the whiskey, again until smooth. Remove from heat. Then one at a time whisk in the sugar, egg, vanilla and buttermilk. Stir in the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, it will be slightly lumpy.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20 – 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out relatively clean. Cool on a rack before flipping out of the pan.

Served with whipped cream that has been dyed green.

Makes a single layer 8″ cake

Shamrock Cakes

Supplies:

• 8″ round single layer chocolate cake (brownies would work good too)
• long serrated knife
• 2″ heart cookie cutter

Trim the cake so it is flat and not much thicker than your cookie cutter. A long serrated knife works well for this.

Using the cookie cutter cut out eight hearts along the outer edge of the cake and one in the center. Make sure you are pressing the cutter all the way through the cake so the hearts don’t get stuck an break. Save three of the little triangle pieces between the hearts for stems. Eat the scraps.

Arrange the hearts into a shamrock shape.

Before serving top with the green whipped cream.

You will get three shamrocks out of one 8″ cake. Matt says each shamrock is one serving and I say they could easily be two.