Juicy Wine Cakes for my Favorite Dunce

“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

-Jonathan Swift, from “Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting”

Happy 7^th Birthday, Izzy, bulldog of mine. You and Ignatius Jacques Reilly, the fat buffoon protagonist of Jonathan Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, share more than just fatness and a habit of gorging on any available foods while appearing aloof and entitled to gluttony. You too are a genius in your own right. It was a matter of perfect theology and geometry that you came into our lives, where you remain wedged tightly somewhere between my shins and the kitchen countertop or in the precious small space between KP and myself in the bedroom or, elsewise, just under my left armpit when I should dare to eat a bowl of ice cream in perfect solitude.

You break my heart with your pitifulness, and then you wag me into cheer again with a few tongue lashings to the face and a few jowly drool smears on important papers or fresh dry-cleaned slacks. You will ever and always be our first dog, and as you lay languished about the house in layers of your own flesh like a pooling statue, we memorialize you prehumously with a nostalgia most can only muster for the beloved dead.

Hope you enjoyed the juicy wine cake, Izz-natius.

This recipe makes six wine cakes. Or, if you are a bulldog, six bites.

Juicy Wine Cakes

Adapted from A Confederacy of Dunces Cookbook

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup sugar

4 large eggs

Dash of ground cloves

1 tsp vanilla

½ cup Cajun spiced rum

Heavy whipping cream and cherries (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 and grease 5-6 ramekins or 4-inch baking molds with butter. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. In another mixer bowl, combine softened butter with sugar and beat until fluffy. Scrape it all down and add each of the eggs, one at a time, and then cloves and vanilla. At a slower speed, add the dry mixture and the rum alternating a little wet and dry until all mixed. Pour into molds until 2/3 full (key, otherwise you’ll get the mounded wonders that you see I created.) Bake for 40 minutes until a little browned and springy. Let cool in molds for five minutes and then remove and cool the rest of the way on a rack.

You can make a wine sauce by bowling down another cup of rum and cup of sugar, cover the cakes with it and then wrap with saran and refrigerate to serve the next day….or you could just dig in. Or serve one to your sweet bully on her birthday with a little meat-flavored dog treat garnish.

This recipe comes from a fabulous cookbook I received for Christmas. I also highly recommend the book Confederacy of Dunces, a Pulitzer Prize winner comedic classic that calls New Orleans, then and now, like it is.