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Avalir wrote: ↑Sat Jun 04, 2022 1:11 pm Hey y'all,
So I've had this idea floating around in my head for a while now and I think it's near time to give it a test run. I'm sure we all enjoy a nice rum cake (by the way, I'll attach my personal rum cake recipe that I'll be modifying), so why not upgrade it to a bourbon cake and ambitiously give tribute to various stages of our homemade bourbon in the process?

I have not yet made this, so I would greatly appreciate any feedback or suggestions that can be offered.
I'll probably end up doing a few trial runs without using my bourbon or syrup (I'll talk more about the syrup in a bit) to make sure the spent grain cake hits the mark so I don't waste my more scarce and time consuming ingredients before I know I have the cake right.

I'm planning to take my rum cake recipe as a jumping off point and tune it for bourbon. See my rum cake recipe below:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
3.4oz box vanilla pudding mix
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup butter flavored crisco [plus extra to coat bundt pan]
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 eggs
2/3 cup spiced rum (I use Captain Morgan Private Stock)
2 tsp vanilla extract
Cream rum [for soaking the finished cake - I prefer this over rum and simple syrup] (I like Rum Chata for this)
Almond flour [to dust bundt pan]

Preheat oven to 325F.
Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl (I'm not picky about the order it's done, just dump it all in and mix slowly to avoid a mess).
Coat bundt pan in a generous amount of butter flavored crisco and dust with enough almond flour to adequately coat the crisco layer (may want to shake out excess almond flour after dusting).
Pour batter into prepped bundt pan and place on the center oven rack.
Bake at 325F for 50-60min.
Once cool, poke deep holes into the top (bottom) of the rum cake while it's still in the bundt pan. Pour cream rum (2+ cups/to taste) over the cake, cover, and let rest several hours.
Turn upside down on a cake tray/serving tray and be amazed at how easily and flawlessly it comes out by using crisco and almond flour.


So now that you've seen my rum cake, I'll pitch the modifications I'm leaning towards to bourbonfy it.
I'm thinking I'll replace a quarter of the flour (1/2 cup) with a spent grain flour (my bill is 64% corn, 20% barley malt, 10% oats, 6% wheat). After fermentation, I'll strain and rinse a portion of grains, then oven dry for a couple hours at the lowest temperature setting. I'll probably grind in my coffee grinder for a decently fine grind (I don't think the food processor or blender I have does a sufficient job with milling grains to flour). Obviously, instead of rum, I'll be substituting my homemade bourbon. For soaking, I'll backpedal a bit and go the traditional spirit and syrup approach. So for the syrup, I plan to take some of my wort after mashing and boil it down to a nice thick consistency--we'll see how a half gallon of wort looks after being boiled down to a pint, if too thin, a cup. Thinking at this time to do a 50/50 mix of bourbon and syrup.
As far as other modifications, I'm contemplating reducing white sugar and supplementing it with dark brown sugar or dark muscovado. Also considering subbing sour cream for the heavy cream, or reconfiguring amounts of my different fats to just add sour cream to the mix. I'm unsure how well it may rise with the addition of the spent grain flour, so I may need to swap baking powder for baking soda, or do a 50/50 mix.

Just thought I'd share my ambitions with all of you. Bakers, feel free to make suggestions on tweaks.
If nothing else, all you looking over this can feel free to snatch up my rum cake recipe--it's phenomenal.

Twisted Brick wrote: ↑Fri Jul 15, 2022 7:02 am There was a thread posted a while back reporting the results of making bread with spent grains. It was an epic fail due to the lack of sufficient starch/sugars since given up to its maiden mash. The OP was effectively working with shells or carcasses of grain granules that were empty of providing anything worthwhile.

leont wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 6:27 pm WOW what a big post! Thank you for sharing this great recipe with us. Are you a professional baker? I wonder because cannot imagine how much time did it take to create this recipe. And how do you make your homemade bourbon for this cake? And aso I have a question about coffee grinder - are you sure it won't break? I had some grinders, and they all broke from grinding coffee, so I do not know how to choose a good one. So intruiged to bake this cake asap!