Chocolate Bourbon Cake Recipe

i was heading to my friend gillian's house for dinner. she loves eating just as much a i do. i know she likes chocolate cake so i found this recipe. i pretty much had all the ingredients except bourbon. i used canadian whiskey instead. it'll have a different flavor but it's still a yummy whiskey cake.

* 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, more for greasing pan
* 2 cups all-purpose flour, more for dusting pan
* 5 ounces high quality, unsweetened dark chocolate
* 1/4 cup instant espresso (can use instant coffee)
* 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1 cup bourbon whiskey (can use 1/2 cup), more for sprinkling
* 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
* 2 cups granulated sugar
* 3 large eggs
* 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar), for sprinkling

Method

1 Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a large bundt pan (10 cup capacity), or two 8- or 9-inch loaf pans. Melt chocolate in a microwave oven or in a double boiler over simmering water. Let cool.

2 Put instant espresso and cocoa powder in a 2-cup (or larger) glass measuring cup. Add enough boiling water to come up to the 1 cup measuring line. Mix until powders dissolve. Stir in whiskey and salt; let cool.

3 Beat softened butter until fluffy (2-3 minutes on high). Add sugar and beat until well combined. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract, baking soda and melted chocolate, scraping down sides of bowl with a rubber spatula.

4 With the mixer on the lowest speed, beat in a third of the whiskey espresso cocoa mixture. When liquid is absorbed, beat in 1 cup flour. Repeat additions, ending with whiskey mixture. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes for Bundt pan (loaf pans will take less time, start checking them after 55 minutes).

5 Transfer cake to a rack. Unmold after 15 minutes and sprinkle warm cake with more whiskey. Let cool. Sprinkle powdered sugar through a mesh sieve over the cake before serving.

i had a few slight problems. the first was that i only had two ounces of unsweetened chocolate. so i added 9 more tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder than the recipe called for plus 3 tablespoons of corn oil to make up for the three ounces of unsweetened chocolate i was missing. after the cake was baked, i waited 15 minutes to cool, attempted to pry the cake out the pan and just the top part fell out leaving the bottom part stuck in the pan. the top part of the cake that did fall out crumbled to pieces. it was still yummy though so i threw it back into the bundt pan, poured some more whiskey on top, covered it in powdered sugar and left it like that. gillian said i should call it a chocolate avalanche cake because it looked like a mountain covered in snow that was about to crumble. after dinner, we drank pomegranate wine with the cake and it was really tasty together. then for the second round of cake we drank huge glasses of milk. we ate so much we almost fell asleep! good times!

*update: gillian suggested we call it narcolepsy cake because everytime someone ate a slice they wanted to or almost did fall asleep.