Happy Father’s Day!

Want to surprise your father with a spiked cake? Try the recipe that follows and be the envy of your family and perhaps your neighborhood.

My grandmother taught me a simple but powerful recipe for making a black forest type cake. During college, I needed extra date money and spiked up this recipe and sold it to ladies in the neighborhood for $40 each. I used to have some great date nights because of this special concoction I created. 

What I added to the recipe made it the talk of the neighborhood; everyone loved it. Twenty years later, my new neighborhood was hosting a potluck Christmas party and my GAL spent days preparing a coconut cake. She spent so much time grating a coconut and making sure the cake looked perfect to impress the neighbors. She challenged me to bring something too, so I said I can make a cake that will be better than hers. The challenge was on! During the Christmas party, my cake was completely consumed but no one touched hers because it was so perfect looking no one wanted to mess it up. While everyone went nuts over my simple, easy-to-make cake.

I called it the Otis cake. I named it after Otis Campbell, fictional “town drunk” from Mayberry, because it had alcohol in the icing. What was really funny was that in my neighborhood there lived several hypocritical teetotalers who sneered down their noses if anyone drank a three percent alcohol beer. What made them hypocritical was they loved eating 40 proof cakes. I never found in the scriptures where you were damned for drinking alcohol but spared for eating it. One teetotaler was so brazen that she begged me to make her an Otis cake for her birthday and never understood why I called her a hypocrite. She didn't care what I said because she loved my cake. 

So just follow the recipe and do tell me the reactions you get from your family and/or friends who try it. 

  Otis Cake Recipe

Now, the beauty of this cake you can add various ingredients as long as you have a cake, a fruit center and a Cool Whip icing. 

You can use various cake mixes, different fruit toppings for the center, even try numerous alcohols to add to the Cool Whip. 

Here is the one everyone loved the most. 

White cake mix

Pie filling of blueberries

2 containers of Cool Whip

Frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)  

You can make a normal cake but I like putting it into a torte bowl so that when the icing melts everything is contained.

You can make it without an alcohol addition. You can also use Amaretto, Kahlua, Baileys Irish Cream and others but Frangelico got the most positive reactions. 

Additionally, you can replace the blueberry pie filling with strawberry or cherry pie filling; all are good but the favorite was blueberry. 

So here is the process of making Otis Cake. 

Follow the instructions for the cake mix and pour in two nine-inch pans and bake. While the cake cooks, mix two containers of Cool Whip and pour in at least four ounces of Frangelico liqueur and mix. Add more liqueur … if you so dare! 

Once the cakes are done, remove from oven and melt a Hershey's chocolate bar over the tops of the cakes. That will create a seal to keep the moisture in the cake and add an extra layer of flavor at the same time. After you have spread the chocolate on the cakes, as fast you can, put into the freezer on a towel to prevent melting your freezer racks. This trick will seal in more moisture in your cake to avoid evaporation. 

After the cakes are cooled, put some of the icing into the bottom of the torte bowl and slide in carefully one of the cakes. Next, pour blueberry pie filling on top. Put the second cake on top. Cover the cakes with the rest of the icing and put in the freezer. Remove 30 minutes before your event. Before serving, add pecan halves the cake, shave another chocolate bar or serve as is. The pecans add an extra crunch and texture to the cake and pecans go well with all of the other ingredients. 

So for the father who is hard to buy for, try an Otis cake! I bet he will love it much more than another tie. Just watch out for the teetotalers as they may want more than you have the desire to make.