It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day! I’m not Irish and I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but I need to declare my disdain for green food coloring. It’s gross. Why do we need to turn everything green to celebrate this holiday, people? Why, when you have fabulously festive recipes like this one?
This week’s cake is adapted from an AllRecipes Irish Cream Bundt Cake. As you can probably tell, it calls for Irish cream. There are several brands of Irish cream, but there is really is just one that matters. If a recipe calls for Irish cream, you have to use Baileys. Am I right?
This recipe is one of my favorite kinds of recipes – a cake mix recipe! Here is the mise en place. You can see how simple the ingredients are.
The first step was to grease and flour the bundt pan. Then I sprinkled in the chopped pecans.
Then I sifted the cake mix and pudding mix together in a large bowl. It’s a totally unnecessary step, but I love sifting.
Having learned my lesson with the egg situation in the beer cake (also great for St. Patrick’s Day!), I carefully cracked the eggs into a bowl and inspected the bowl for shells.
I was in the clear! So I dumped the eggs in with the rest of the wet ingredients.
The original recipe said to beat the mix, but I prefer to use a rubber spatula to mix up cake batter. It reduces the likelihood the cake batter will be over mixed.
And into the pan it goes.
Though the original recipe says the cake bakes at 325 degrees for 60 minutes. Mine baked at 350 degrees in about 35 minutes. I rotated the pan halfway through.
Having learned a lesson about flipping bundts out of pans too soon with my Strawberry Ginger Cake, I let this one cool a full 15 minutes in its pan. That poor Strawberry Ginger Cake will never live that one down.
And it flipped out of the pan just fine!
Okay, this is when things got ugly. I was making the glaze according to the original recipe and when I stirred in the Baileys (perhaps prematurely?), it separated from the rest of the mix resulting in a clumpy glaze. I should have scrapped the whole thing, but instead just dumped it on top. Was that the best idea? Well, aesthetically speaking, NO!
I was in a hurry and had to cut myself a piece, eat it, hand off a piece to a friend and get it into the freezer so I could get back on my diet.
And oh, oh my, was this cake delicious! I gobbled my piece up. Chris bit into his and said “Mmm!” and then looked at me with crazy eyes and repeated, “Mmmmm mmmm!” My dear friend, Rory, who I handed a chunk of cake off to emailed me in the middle of the night to let me know he had gotten out of bed to eat another piece. So despite the looks of this cake, it tasted real good. Next time I might rethink the glaze method, but this cake is a keeper.
When I compared the recipes, this one is quite similar to the beer cake recipe. It seems the recipe for a great cake is a box of yellow cake mix, a box of vanilla (or French vanilla, if you’re fancy) pudding, 4 eggs, 1/4 – 1/2 cup of oil and 3/4 – 1 cup of booze makes for a fabulous dessert!
| Baileys Irish Cream Cake |
- FOR CAKE
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 1 box yellow cake mix
- 1 box instant vanilla (or French vanilla) pudding mix
- 4 eggs
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 3/4 cup Baileys Irish cream liqueur
- FOR GLAZE
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup Baileys Irish cream liqueur
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease and flour bundt pan.
- Sprinkle pecans in bottom of pan.
- Sift together the cake mix and pudding mix.
- Add eggs, water, vegetable oil, and Baileys. Mix with rubber spatula until just combined.
- Pour cake into pan.
- The cake bakes for approximately 35 minutes in a nonstick, coated pan. Adjust bake time according to your pan.
- Let cake cool for 15 minutes in its pan on a cooling rack.
- Flip cake out of pan and cool completely.
- While cake is cooling, melt butter, sugar and water for glaze in a small saucepan over medium-high heat.
- Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
- Remove from heat, let cool for a few minutes. Then stir in Baileys Irish Cream.
- Pour about 3/4 of glaze into empty bundt pan. Poke holes in the cooled cake with a toothpick.
- Return cake to its pan to soak up glaze.
- Poke holes in the “bottom” of the cake and pour remaining glaze over it. Allow cake to stand in glaze for 15 minutes before flipping back out onto serving dish.
This is almost the same exact recipe that I use for Bacardi Rum Cake, but I buy a yellow cake mix with the pudding already in. Also, instead of removing the cake from the pan, I poke holes in the cake while it’s still in the bundt pan, pour the glaze over and allow time for it to absorb. Much faster. Can also be made in a 9 x 13 pan for more servings.
Sue – Thanks for the tip! Bacardi Rum Cake sounds like it’s right up my ally. I used yellow cake mix with pudding already in it for this one too. So the extra package of pudding made it super moist.
[…] Oh, that’s just some Baileys Irish Cream! I had exactly 1/2 cup left over from when I made my Baileys Irish Cream Cake. I knew this cake was a winner once I saw Irish cream listed in the ingredients. It really adds a […]
Do you have to refrigerator leftovers of the beer cake
Hi Shelly! Thanks for your comment. You do not need to refrigerate the leftover beer cake, unless you want to.