Sauvingnon blanc Pound cake- the experiment

By Chewy (with remarks in purple by La Confectionista)

      La Confectionista and I are decent cooks and bakers (well she is- I make makes no claim on baking), but no one from the Cordon Bleu has yet to call us to teach a seminar. That being said, we felt an obligation to not just talk the talk but also walk the walk and test out a few recipes that have been posted on this blog. We were both intrigued (by intrigued she means "sugar and booze- hooray!") with the Sauvignon Blanc Pound Cake with Sauvignon Blanc glaze and gathering all the ingredients together, we rallied in my kitchen for the afternoon’s adventure.

       The first thing one MUST do when cooking with wine is open the bottle and taste it! As you have heard me state, and really all great cooks will concur, you cannot cook with wine that you would not drink. So naturally, we poured a glass. Hmmmmm. Not bad. I would drink that. OK. We mustered ourselves for the task at hand. LC decided we didn’t need a printed copy of the recipe because she could bring it up from the blog on her fancy phone. Great, then she leaves for a moment and I am left trying to read tiny print with half century old eyes, a sip of wine under my belt and an arm full of ingredients. In mid sentence the screen goes blank and after setting everything down I touch the screen. Nothing. I push a button. Locked out. I slide a bar. It wants a password. I hide the phone and go downstairs to get the printed copy and check for more Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge just “in case”.

     The Counte (mighty CFO and general objective thinker) notifies us by fancy phone that we need to take photos of the whole process so the staging begins. Fancy phone comes in handy for this so I let it back in the room. Searching for photo worthy bowls, measuring cups and spoons, we organize and position the ingredients. Now, to check again on the wine to make sure it hadn’t gone bad since we opened it. Nope, still good.

     Gets pretty mundane for a while, measure, measure, stir, stir, sip, sip.  And when it came to the ingredients we spared no expense. Organic unsalted butter, organic whole milk, “I would drink it” Sauvignon Blanc, cage free eggs, and all topped off with my home made vanilla extract. Literally every time LC comes to my house, she opens the bottle and smells it with a smile and an “AHHHH!”. So she decides the vanilla extract needs to be taste tested too. Adding a shot to a glass of whole milk, she determines “I would drink it!”.

     Batter is now thoroughly combined and ready for the Bundt pan. I doesn’t own one so LC brought her silicone one and a lengthy conversation ensued regarding whether the size and material would be suitable to the task at hand. (I told her it would be fine) But in the end we greased up the silicone and poured in the aggregate, set the timer and sat down to contemplate the rest of the wine and how much we needed to save for the glaze.

     The recipe called for 65 to 75 minutes to bake after which, one was to stick a long wooden pick into the center to check for doneness. The long wooden sticks were downstairs. But toothpicks were upstairs. Rats! Not long enough. But two of them end to end would work, especially if you taped them together! What do you know, it worked! At least the first couple of times. For whatever reason, and we’ve decided to blame it on the silicone Bundt pan, it took an additional 25 minutes for this to reach acceptable done cake stage. Unfortunately, the last test with improvised “long wooden pick” left one pick and the tape trapped in the cake. Not to worry, we’ll just make it a game and who ever finds it in their piece gets a prize! (for the record I had no idea this was happening until the "oops"...great, who likes scotch tape flavored cake? It could be the next thing, right?)

     On to the glaze! LC insisted on handling this juncture and took the bottle of wine away from me to carefully measure the 2 tablespoons required. Glaze finished and drizzled, we get down to the business of tasting. What a mixed bag of emotions. We were not blown away.  Honestly there was so little wine in the recipe one could barely detect it. And I have had (and made) far better pound cakes. The glaze had a funny taste as well.  We’re  thinking it was the cornstarch from the confectioners sugar. And we did end up finding the toothpick and tape before someone stabbed themselves.(no cake was harmed, though the "search and rescue mission" proved unkind to the look of the cake)  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go finish that bottle of wine before it goes bad.

     Stay tuned for further kitchen escapades as LC and I endeavor to bring you up close and personal experiences from the Hall of Recipes posted right here.