Spruce Tip Beer Spice Cake with Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
Spruce Tip Beer Spice Cake with Caramel Sauce
- 3/4 cup 6 oz butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup spruce tip sugar recipe follows
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla bourbon, or whisky
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp allspice
- 1/4 tsp cloves
- 1 1/2 cups spruce tip beer try Winterlong or Yukon Brewing
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 1 cup chopped dried apricots
Spruce Tip Sugar
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup dried fresh, or frozen and thawed spruce tips
Caramel Sauce
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/2 cup 35% cream
- 1 tsp bourbon
Instructions
Spruce Tip Sugar
- Combine sugar and spruce tips in a food processor and pulse until thoroughly blended and spruce tips are pulverized.
- Store in a jar in the cupboard and use any extra in spruce tip shortbreads, sprinkled on top of sugar cookies, or in gingerbread. Substitute 1/4 to 1/2 of the sugar called for in the recipe with spruce tip sugar.
Cake
- Grease and flour a 10 or 12-cup Bundt pan, or a 9 x 13 cake pan. Preheat oven to 350F.
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars together until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Stir in vanilla, bourbon or whisky.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and spices until thoroughly blended.
- Add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture in two batches, alternating with the beer, stirring well after each addition.
- At the end, stir in pecans and apricots, making sure they’re distributed evenly.
- Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with the back of a spoon dipped in hot water.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 50 minutes (Bundt pan) or 35 minutes (9 x 13-inch pan), until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Cool on a rack for 10 to 15 minutes. Loosen the cake from the Bundt pan with a slim bladed knife, place a serving plate over top and flip the pan upside down so the cake is transferred to the plate. Just leave the 9 x 13 cake in the pan.
- Pour caramel sauce over top of the Bundt cake so it drips down the sides and reserve some sauce for the table. For the 9 x 13 cake, slice and serve the cake and drizzle sauce over each piece, passing reserved sauce at the table.
Caramel Sauce
- Place ingredients, except bourbon, in a small saucepan set over medium heat. Bring to the boil, stirring frequently. Once blended, cook for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened. Add bourbon at the end.
- Remove from heat and allow to sit for a few minutes before pouring over the cake. Decant extra syrup into a small jug or bowl for serving at the table. Refrigerate sauce in a covered jar—it will keep for several days. Warm up a bit before serving.
What are the essential ingredients in a holiday season dessert? For me it’s warm spices like cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, allspice – all the flavours that go into fruit cake, Christmas pudding, pumpkin cheesecake, eggnog cheesecake, gingerbread.
In my house, growing up, dessert on Christmas Day was always plum pudding (not a plum in sight, but lots of dates, raisins, cinnamon, and cloves) served with hard sauce (butter, icing sugar, brandy). My mother made the pudding, with beef suet one of the ingredients, and packed it into small ivory-coloured ceramic pudding bowls. The puddings were lowered into the big pot (the one also used to make applesauce) and set on top of jar lids to protect the bowls from the burner’s heat. Then they were steamed, in memory, for hours.
I’ve never replicated my mom’s recipe, mostly because beef suet is not that easy to find these days, and steaming puddings is a bit of a process. My current household has opted for fruit cake instead, or sometimes a pumpkin cheesecake, or since I discovered it, eggnog cheesecake. All of which share the essential flavours of those warm southern spices.
This year, charmed by the flavour of Yukon spruce-tip beer, I’m branching out. I don’t know if you really taste the spruce as spruce in this cake, but there’s a flavour in there like no other, and the cake is rich and dense and made even more holiday-like with the addition of caramel sauce. For this year’s big day, it’s not only a contender, it’s the winner!
