When I find that I have some leftover wine in my refrigerator, there are quite a few ways to use it up. You can add fruit juices and sweeteners to make a batch of sangria, you can use it in savory cooking or turn it into a delicious cake. Both white and red wines can be used in baking with surprisingly good results. My Sauvignon Blanc Bundt Cake is a spring favorite that highlights the flavors of the wine. Over on the Craftsy Blog (it’s free!), I’m sharing a recipe for a rich Red Wine Chocolate Cake, which combines red wine with a bittersweet chocolate batter for an intensely flavored cake. Red wine works in the cake because both the cocoa powder and wine have fruity berry notes, though neither is sweet on its own, and those berry notes come together to add another layer of flavor to the finished cake. To make the cake even more decadent, I topped it with a Red Wine Ganache.
I baked this cake as a single layer, but the cake recipe can be doubled and turned into a layer cake. If you go for the layer cake option, let the ganache thicken more than you would for a single cake before spreading it on. The ganache should run off the sides of a single-layer cake, while for a layer cake, you’ll want it to be thick enough to put some space between the two layers of cake.
What do you think?