I baked Robin one of my famous curried chocolate cakes in my small dutch oven for valentines day. The cake is curried with whiskey and jalapenos and cardamom and cinnamon. Robin’s eyes winced and watered when she tasted the cake. From love, she said, not from the hot peppers and whiskey.

I do not bother with top-shelf bourbons that purport to have smooth or drinkable properties. I don’t buy whiskey to put in my neti pot. I buy whiskey to box my face on long winter nights and for pouring on my ski-boot blisters. I like a whiskey that makes me say a little “yip” when I drink it. The fail safe formula I’ve found for buying powerful Kentucky bourbon is to select one that purports to be old, but not early or ancient. Old Grandad, Old Crow, Old Forester, Old Bardstown, Old Heaven Hill, Old Fitzgerald, Old Rip Van Winkle, Old Charter, Old Pogue, Very Old Barton, or (my favorite) Old Ezra are all nice whiskeys and don’t cost a lot.

To begin the cake, I poured a couple belts of Old Ezra into an old tin cup and then chose a leathery, smoked jalapeno from the larder along with six or eight cardamom pods to steep in it.

As it happens, this is also the recipe for a cocktail I invented last winter called an Old Fuss and Feathers, which is named after Gen. Winfield Scott. You may have also heard me term it a Grand Old Man of the Army. The leathery smoked jalapeno is meant to evoke one of those long calf-skin riding gloves the generals of the era wore, and the black cardamom pellets are meant to look like lead musket balls. What Gen. Scott is doing in a cup of confederate bourbon I cannot say.  

If you serve the drink with a raw egg on the side, it’s called a Sam Houston Omelette or a Shenandoah Sunny Side Up, and if you serve it with a squeeze of lemon it’s a Foxhunt Yip or a Rebel Yell.

While your Grand Old Man of the Army is steeping, get your coals started. For an 8 inch cake like this you’ll need to start sixteen coals: five for the bottom and eleven for the top.

Mix the flour, baking soda, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and cocoa powder. After an hour at the saloon, your dried jalapeno will have plumped up and reconstituted and the cardamom pellets will have sunk, if they’re worth their salt. Put the cockail in the blender to make a Manassas Margarita. Strain the Manassas Margarita through a screen into your cake mix. Then add everything else: the oil, the buttermilk, and the vanilla. 

Bake for thirty five minutes. While the cake was on the hearth I made the frosting by melting the chocolate, butter, buttermilk, and whiskey together. Then I let it cool off and stirred in the confectioner’s sugar and the spices.

Plop the cake out of the dutch oven and let cool. Decorate with the frosting and serve with Foxhunt Yips served in cold tin cups.

CAKE:

1 2/3 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup dutch cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup Old Fuss and Feathers cocktail

*2 belts Old bourbon

*6 cardamom pods

*1 leathery smoked jalapeno

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinammon

FROSTING:

2 ounces bitter chocolate

1 TBS melted butter

1/3 cup buttermilk

1 TBS Old whiskey

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinammon