Recipes By Natasha Pickowicz
2 recipes found
Chocolate Whiskey Cake With Coffee Caramel
While traditional wedding cakes often combine bright, crowd-pleasing fruits like citrus and berries with richer flavors like vanilla and cream, a second cake (sometimes called a groom’s cake) is the couple’s chance to get weirder, boozier and more playful. Crucially, the cake can appear more rustic and simple, since it’s not in the same spotlight as a tiered centerpiece. Here, a tender cocoa cake is baked — and served — right out of its pan. Instead of thin, alternating layers of cake, buttercream and jam, this sheet cake is soaked with a whiskey and coffee-spiked milk, then topped with a glossy boiled caramel glaze and a final dusting of cocoa powder. No weddings on the horizon? This cake is great for anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Toasted Sesame and Citrus Wedding Cake
Everyone loves receiving a homemade gift, but how about a showstopping, two-tiered, citrus-festooned, sesame-laced wedding cake? With a little planning (and an organized freezer), it’s so much easier than you think. Thin, even layers of vanilla sponge cake, soaked with a vivid citrus syrup, are draped like lasagna sheets into pans, along with swaths of nutty sesame buttercream, charred citrus compote and a granola-adjacent sesame crunch. The cake rests while you do, then is removed from the pans, coated in buttercream, packed up and assembled the day of the wedding. There's no finer — or more delicious — way to allow the effort, care and creativity of its maker to come through. And don’t forget to save and freeze the excess cake scraps for ice cream sandwiches, trifles or snacking. For the equipment you’ll need to put this cake together, check our Wirecutter’s recommendations for baking essentials and cake decorating tools.