Sunday Cook N: Tropical Chardonnay Cake

Three things you should know about me:



1) I am trying desperately to balance my love of dessert and good food with my need to get in better physical shape (I am sure I am not alone in that pursuit!)



2) While I love things made from scratch- I am not above enhancing a product that comes in a box. I do eat mostly unprocessed foods, but every now and again I come across something new that I just have to try...



3) Wine is something that usually isn't leftover in our home.



So Sunday's dessert should be pretty easy to explain now.



I decided to allow myself dessert on Sundays. Simon and I spent the entire week working out on our Wii Fit to balance the calorie upswing from that delicious spanish rice the other night and a few other delightful courses this week.



I bought this bottle of Cabernet Cake mix a few months back while at a conference at Skamania Lodge in Southern Washington because I liked the packaging and thought "Cabernet in my cake sounds good"





Surprisingly, I had some leftover chardonnay from our Spanish rice night. I prefer red wine, but the rice recipe called for white and the Oak Grove Chardonnay was very nice. Just not as good as the Rex Goliath Merlot that we polished off instead.



The ingredients in the Cabernet Cake bottle were flour, coconut, vanilla (and a few other more scientific ingredients that shall remain nameless) The leftover Oak Grove Chardonnay had a nice tropical fruit essence, with vanilla tones. I thought that these two products would merge well together. (And then I could enjoy a whole bottle of Cabernet with my cake)



First, let me note that while the packaging for this cake mix was, indeed, creative. Removing the cake mix through the narrow neck of this bottle was not easy. It took forever and a mix of techniques to extract the goods- for this reason alone I do not recommend this product! The rest of the cake was fairly easy though: a little chardonnay wine, a few eggs, water and canola oil and...voila...chardonnay cake. I believe you could easily modify a simple butter cake recipe and achieve the same result. (maybe better, even). The cake was moist and rich and the flavor was very vanilla-like.



I topped the cake with a mix of tropical fruit. This was a Del Monte jarred product containing passionfruit, pineapple, mango and papaya (lightly sweetened with sugar and passion fruit juice). The fresh tropical fruit at our local grocer was overpriced and didn't look good. I drained the fruit, added some brown sugar and the rest of the chardonnay and brought the mix to a boil. I threw in a few bananas as it cooled.



A dollop of whipped heavy whipping cream flavored with a bit of vanilla and just a pinch of sugar balanced the sweetness of the dessert. A final sprinkle of toasted coconut and we couldn't wait to dig in. A very nice dessert.