Chocolate Armagnac Cake -- Tuesdays with Dorie

(Chocolate Scotch Whiskey Cake or Prune and Whiskey Cake seem more appropriate)

Hello TWD friends! I have been doing some last minute (aka Monday night) baking of Dorie's Chocolate Armagnac Cake, picked by Lyb of And then I do the dishes. We had a crazy weekend, getting ready for a birthday, and my littlest one not feeling well :( I haven't had a chance to make the frosting/glaze yet and will do that Tuesday morning, nothing wrong with cake for breakfast, right? Just kidding...kind of. Hey, it does have prunes and pecans, right? Anyway I subbed the Armagnac for Scotch Whiskey (which was a suggested substitute and for me it was a toss up between that and brandy since that's all our little home liquor cabinet had) I actually looked at some Armagnac online (the crooked neck bottle looked fun) when this recipe was announced, but they wouldn't ship to our state and of course no one around here sells anything that fancy... so prunes and whiskey, hmm.

As for baking, I added an extra 5 minutes, so 37 total, and here is my 'streaky knife' shot...

a few cake shots -- and a couple of shots of my prunes flambe...

Just wanted to set this up for auto posting at midnight for all of you early morning (or night owl) TWD readers...promise to update Tuesday mid morning!

Update: As you can see by the pictures I finally was able to finish this cake! If I were to pick one word to describe it, it would have to be "fudgey." Is that even a word? No? Oh-well, you know what I mean. I think my favorite part of this cake would have to be the extra moist crumb with the hint of crunch from the pecans. The prunes were perfect in this, unlike most people I am not a prune hater, I actually like them, but we rarely buy them so it was nice to be able to see them in a new light with this cake. I do not think the alcohol was overpowering at all in this (I am not a big alcohol fan) but it did add a nice depth. Maybe because I let it sit overnight the flavors had a chance to mellow. I don't think I could have frosted the cake like the photo in the book unless I were to double the glaze, but maybe that was just me. I really enjoyed trying this cake, what an amazingly rich, impressive dessert.