I was flipping through some cookbooks and found a rum-soaked cake that looked interesting. I'd never done anything like that, and introducing alcohol into lunch seemed a lovely idea. I've never made a layer cake, though, and didn't want this to be my first attempt. Cakes are also sort of impractical for our lunch venue, where we have very little in the way of cutlery. So I looked around online for cupcakes as a starting point.
As I've said before, one of my favorite (former) cupcake blogs is Vanilla Garlic. He had a rum-soaked cupcake with dulce de leche icing that sounded delicious. It called for spiced rum, though, which I didn't have. At first I thought I would use coconut rum instead, but then realized I had some leftover vodka that I had infused with Indian mangoes last summer.
Infusing vodka is a really fun thing to do with fruit. Normally I'd throw whole fruit in, but Indian mangoes are a special case. Rather than waste whole precious mangoes, I took all of the pits from a case or so of alphonso mangoes and a couple banganapalis (with the flesh on them still untouched) as I finished eating the rest of the mango, and dropped them in a jar with vodka for a month or so. The result is a nice, sweet vodka that's refreshing with some soda and lime. Or on a cupcake?
Why not? I used a bit of the vodka in the cupcake batter, per the recipe. Then I brushed each cupcake twice with a generous amount of vodka. They're pretty soaked at this point.
These were then topped with an icing made by beating some cream cheese with (canned, sorry) dulce de leche, and then topping with some sliced almonds.
The result is a very moist cake that does taste a bit of vodka, but is mostly just sweet and creamy. I'll let my colleagues pass final judgment, but I confess that I really liked the one I just tasted...
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