First, I should make it clear that I am not adverse to receiving baked goods as gifts, lest the following rant dissuade any potential friends and admirers from doing so. I like the cake and the pie and the candy, oh yes I do. I like the homemade stuff and the store-bought stuff (trans fats or not). What I don’t like is the pretentious stuff.
My brother and his wife gifted Greg and I with a very swank little cake for Christmas. Created in a little bakery shop on the boardwalk of Halifax Harbour by a company called RumRunners (as most of their cakes are made with rum, a long-time Nova Scotian staple, particularly during prohibition), this cake was actually made with Glen Breton Whisky.
As an aside, Glenora Distilleries are the first single malt distiller in Canada. We had a bottle of their first offerings a few years back and it was, to be polite, godawful. It has apparently since improved a great deal and has gained international recognition. Currently they are being threatened with legal action from some Scottish Whisky Association, because according to the Scots, only whisky from Scotland can be a “Glen”.
Part of the cachet of the cake, and this little bakery, is that everything is made onsite. And you can apparently watch the process through a window as you stroll along the boardwalk on your way to some of the other high-end tenants, such as the very swank restaurant Bish. The whole area is designed for tourists or the upscale yuppies living in the condos nearby.
The cake itself, I’m sorry to say, was a disappointment. Arriving in a lovely tin and shrink-wrapped in heavy plastic that keeps the cake for up to three months, it was both dry and vaguely soggy at the same time – dry bottom, soggy top, to be specific. Also, uneven and verging on unattractive. The ingredients were of the highest quality: sugar, flour, eggs, butter, milk, water, whisky, pecans, coconut… and that’s where things go askew. For the coconut used in the cake was a presweetened product that included propylene glycol and sorbitol. Now why would you go and ruin a perfectly good cake, made with fresh, real ingredients, and then throw in some crappy, chemical-coated coconut??
Flavour-wise, the whisky was discernible, but simply as “whisky”. I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell a Glen Breton cake from a Cardhu cake or a Dalwhinnie cake, or any cake made with a sweet, heathery whisky. A smokey peaty whisky might have changed the flavour, and probably not in a good way, but that’s really the only taste factor that would have created a difference.
To counter the dryness of the cake, I doused it liberally with a homemade whisky sauce, made with Dalmore. Not because I have a great love for Dalmore, but because it was the easiest to reach as the Christmas tree was blocking the whisky shelf.
I think the most disappointing aspect of the whole experience was the company’s website. I visited hoping to see some photos of the actual shop, the products, and the baking process. By my brother’s description, it sounds like a lovely place, full of the great smell of rum cake being made. The website is both overly informative yet tells you almost nothing about the product, instead going on about the long history of rum running. Which would be fine, if there were pictures of cake!!!
I’ve got half a cake left, wrapped and placed in the freezer. I’m not really sure what to do with the rest of it. I’m envisioning some kind of trifle with a whisky-laced custard and perhaps some candied pecans and plenty of caramel sauce.
Anyone have any other ideas?
