All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [35]
12. Once the cake has cooled, transfer it to a serving plate—or, hey, how about moving it to your cake carry? It’s a lot easier to tote to your office goats that way,
The Naughty Senator Peppermint and Chocolate Rum Marble Cake
NEW TECHNIQUE ALERT!
MARBLING
I can’t believe I’m going to tell this about a cake, but here goes: One summer, a married senator got in trouble in the men’s bathroom at a Minneapolis airport. They say Larry Craig was looking for love in all the wrong places. He pleaded guilty to a charge amounting to disturbing the peace. Then, when the story hit cable news, he adamantly stated, repeatedly, that he was “not gay.” Oddly, this sex scandal followed another in which a Louisiana senator’s phone number was found in the records of an “escort” service, and he’d had to stand up before the cameras and apologize for his behavior. Both men were the family values sort. It’s funny; the family values sorts never seem to understand it’s not just the questionable behavior that upsets people, it’s the hypocrisy. Senator Craig had been on Meet the Press during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and said repeatedly that then president Bill Clinton was a “bad boy, a naughty boy.” Naturally, that “bad, naughty boy” rock was thrown through Craig’s glass house when his arrest in Minneapolis went public. This whole thing was playing out on TV while I was trying to figure out a good combination of flavors for a marble cake, so the idea of a naughty senator cake was spinning around in my head when I came up with this recipe.
I settled on peppermint, chocolate, and rum. Peppermint, because the senators and congresspeople I’ve met over the years at NPR always seem to smell of mint. It’s a public speaking thing: You don’t want to bowl over Robert Siegel with bad breath, though Robert’s far too gentlemanly to let you know he’s noticed—he’s all about the interview. Chocolate, because it’s rich and so are most senators. Rum, because, well, rum means debauchery to me. Or at least a sizable impairment of good judgment. That’s a story for another book. Anyway …
This cake is light and fluffy. It also tastes a little like Junior Mints, and folks are intrigued by the idea of green cake.
The Naughty Senator also lends itself to thin slices and will serve 16 to 32 people, depending on how you slice it (boy, that joke never gets old, does it?).
* * *
YOU’LL NEED
A 12-cup Bundt or 10-inch tube pan Extra mixing bowl
2 cups sugar
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 large eggs
3½ cups sifted cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons peppermint flavoring or extract
½ teaspoon green food coloring
2 teaspoons rum or rum extract
1. Center a rack and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare the pan.
2. In a small bowl, combine ½ cup of the sugar and all the cocoa. Set aside.
3. With the mixer, cream the butter at medium speed, gradually adding the remaining 1 ½ cups of sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. In a separate bowl, dry whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together.
5. With the mixer on low speed, add 1 cup of the flour mixture, beat, then add ⅓ cup of the milk and beat again. Repeat until all of the flour mixture and milk are blended into batter. Beat on medium-high speed for 2 to 3 minutes.
6. Pour half of the batter into a clean medium bowl.
7. Add the peppermint flavoring and a couple of drops of green food coloring to one bowl of batter. NOTE: don’t use too much food coloring, just enough to get it a pastel green. Mix well.
8. Pour two-thirds of the now green batter into the bottom of the cake pan. Set aside the remaining green batter.
9. Clean off your mixer beaters, dry, and return them to the mixer.
10. Add the cocoa and sugar mixture to the yellow batter and add the rum or rum extract. Beat until smooth.
11. Using your spatula, pour the chocolate-flavored batter over the green batter in the cake pan.
12. Layer the remaining third of