Cakes With (and Without) Booze

I am putting together a little cookbooking club. The idea is that several of us will cook out of the same cookbook and then get together to share our successes and failures and have a dinner party to try the favorites. I tried doing this on my own and it was lonely and it took forever to work through a cookbook.

This might end up being a column in the local newspaper, but for now, I am just cooking.

Or more specifically, I am baking. And baking. And baking.
The cookbook is called Booze Cakes and the title is pretty self-explanatory. I am making cakes with lots and lots of booze in them. Booze in the cake, booze in the frosting, booze in the whipped cream, and booze in the layers between the frosting and the cake. It's a little over the top.

For example, the two photos above feature the Top Shelf Margarita Cheesecake. Not only did I put triple sec and tequila in the batter, it is also in the whipped cream. This tasted pretty delicious, but it was super rich.

Next up, well, the same evening actually, I made the Rosemary Limoncello Cake. It was lemon overload. Lemon juice, lemon peel, limoncello in the batter and again in the glaze, plus candied lemons; we could barely taste the rosemary because there was so much lemon! This was still my favorite of the two. It has pine nuts in it too which balance a bit with the lemon and it wasn't so heavy on the fat.
Here's the Rosemary Limoncello cake I made today, only minus the Limoncello and plus fresh fruit. (Obviously.) The apricots, blackberries, and blueberries are all from our organic produce delivery. Bonus.
My sister is visiting and she doesn't drink alcohol at all, so I modified it to be sans alcohol. There is still a lot of fresh lemon juice and zest in it, so I am sure the lemon flavor will turn out just fine.
I might want to skip dinner and go straight to dessert!