Champagne Cake

I have a confession. I love to make an impressive dessert, but sometimes its just so hard. Things like cakes and pastry crust are best left to the professionals like Betty Crocker and Pillsbury. I have made an art out of making a mix cake a masterpiece. So when it was time to bring dessert to our family New Years Eve party I whipped up this Champagne Cake.

The players:

Box of white cake, can of frosting, 2 pints of blackberries (they were on sale any sexy fruit will do), and cheap champagne.

First I made sauce out of one of the pints of blackberries. I added 1 cup of water and 1/2 cup of sugar and let it simmer on medium. The trick with fruit sauces I find is to let the fruit flavor come out so I don't add vanilla or leamon, I just leave it be. To tell you the truth I took a shower.

Then I made the cake following the instructions on the box but replacing the water with champagne.

Another confession, I am terrified of turning cakes out. I always mess it up. When I was in the store staring at my box of cake mix I had a realization. If I'm trusting my cake to a professional why am I greasing my own pans like a dork? So bought Bakers Joy. It's a pray greaser with flour. Verdict- two thumbs up. Will never grease my own pans again.

After about half an hour the sauce was don but looked like this:

 So I hit it with a potato mashe a couple of time to make it more saucy looking.

 My plan was to have a ring of berry-ness in the middle of the cake so I poured half of the batter in then poured in the sauce. The sauce ended up sinking to the bottom of the pan making a berry coatin o the top of the cake.

And what to do with the rest of the champagne? Make a mimosa. In my defense neither the champagne or the juice was refrigerated thats why there are Ice cubes. I wasn't raised in a barn I swear.

 If I had planned things better (and waited to have my mimosa) I would have saved a couple spoonfuls of the sauce to put in the icing. But hindsight is 20/20 right? Instead I melted the icing to give it a drizzling consistency and mashed a couple of the garnishing blackberries to give it color and added a generous splash of champagne for good measure. .

Look at that beauty out of the oven.

I topped it with blackberries and methodically drizzled the champagne icing over it and ta-da! It tasted unreal good. You should make one of these right now.

<3 Ruth