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Crafting Kitchen Confidence

Sherry Cake | The Secret Family Recipe

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Every family has that secret family recipe. The one that has been passed down through the generations, a priceless commodity that requires some secret ingredient or technique that only Mom knows about. For me, it’s my sherry wine cake. I first got the recipe from my mom, who got it from her father’s mom, and so on and so forth. As soon as the recipe was passed to me and I was told it was a “family recipe,” I accepted this fact without question and knew I had a familial duty to uphold the privacy of its sacred contents. (I’d like to add that this was entirely my melodramatic perception, and my mom has shared this recipe with numerous people…)

Fast forward years later, and your girl here decides she wants to impress Matt one evening and bake him the Stubbs — or more accurately Fox — family wine cake. To no surprise, the kid was hooked and thought it was unbelievably light and fluffy. That inquisitive baker — whose curiosity is on par with Alton Brown — wanted to deconstruct my cake to an elemental level so he could make it himself. Since I knew he was a keeper, I assumed that it was safe for me to share the recipe with him.

I mean, it does call for both instant vanilla pudding and yellow cake mix. I guess I secretly knew he may have had a point, but my denial was about as full-fledged as my 10-year-old self who woke to my father putting Christmas presents downstairs near the tree. Duh, Santa Claus is real; I don’t care what I just saw or what anyone else has to say about that… (add Link to the article about family recipes and potato salad)

We all have that one baking dish that looks gloriously intricate as a finished product but in reality took a sneakingly small amount effort. The entire process to bake this little guy, from start to finish, is less than an hour. And if you’re like me and use a proper bundt pan, you’re cake is sure to be a showstopper. Honestly, I have NEVER made this cake and not received a compliment on way it looks — and tastes — when I use my Williams Sonoma spiral bundt pan. (Insider tip: You can also find our specific Nordic Ware Platinum Collection Heritage Bundt Pan on Amazon Prime, or check out the dozens of other Amazon Prime bundt pan options.) I feel like I’m almost cheating when I use it because I’m far from a master baker — which is definitely more Matt’s thing than mine — but it makes that cake look absolutely elegant.

Now, if you don’t have a snazzy bundt pan, don’t fret —  all is not a loss! This cake recipe may be deceptively simple, but its taste alone will still have people talking.

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