Champagne Cake

While I was at home with my parents, we had a smattering of desserts available any time of the day, mostly attributed to the fact that I couldn't get enough of cooking in their lovely kitchen and therefore, baked every day. Between my mom's blueberry fluff, my blondies, chocolate syrup, caramel sauce and the refrigerated organic cookie dough my mom spotted at Kowalski's, the most gorgeous grocery store I've ever set foot in, we certainly didn't need to add a cake to the list of endless choices.

Ah, but add we did.

Wisconsin residents are able to buy wine and liquor on Sundays (lucky them!), so mom and I browsed the liquor store in search of a sweet, sparkling Asti or Moscato, which we figured would work best with the sweet buttercream. We settled on Barefoot, which was nice for drinking, but didn't pack as much champagne taste as I was hoping it would. Dreamy and light as the cake may have been, next time, I'll use a drier champagne.

For the cake, you will need:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup champagne
6 egg whites

For the buttercream, you will need:

3 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons champagne, at room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Prepare 2 9 inch cake pans: grease with butter and coat with flour.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until very light and fluffy. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together, and then blend into creamed mixture alternately with champagne.

In another large clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the whites into batter to lighten it, then fold in remaining egg whites. Fill the cake pans about 2/3 of the way full.

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cakes comes out clean.

Adapted from Gimme Some Oven