I have a recipe for a great cake - it calls for 1/2 cup of vodka. The cake is baked for about 55 mins at 350 degrees. Is that enough time to burn off most of the alcohol?

I'd love to make it for my niece's birthday, but am hesitant due to the amount of alcohol involved.

Here is the recipe:

4 eggs
2 cups of sugar
2/3 cups of oil
2tsp baking powder
2 cups flour
I package vanilla pudding
3/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup vodka


What do you think? It's really a great tasting cake!

Vodka is 40% alcohol, so you count 40% of the 1/2 c. Now go to the charts online and they will tell you the % of alcohol burned in 50 minutes of baking. I'm not going to look it up, but for example, you start with less than 1/4 c of alcohol. If 50% burns off, you now have 1 oz. of alcohol in the cake divided by 12 or 24 slices, so you have 1/12 or 1/24 oz of alcohol per serving. Not an issue.

Do not go to the charts that give the % of liquor left, because this is not indicative of the % of alcohol.

Is it to be served to children ? How old is the niece ? what does her mother think ? Would you like an alcohol based cake to be served to your child ?

It is 1/4 to 1/8 tsp per serving! Of course you can tell people that it is a vodka based cake, but an informed decision as to the actual content is better than an emotional "how dare you". Heaven forbid we serve them a vanilla milk or a homemade vanilla milkshake. Do the math.

I give my kids IMBC with straight liquers in it occasionally, and they're both in the gifted programs at school. If eating that has killed any brain cells then they must have been freakin' geniuses to start with.

Auzzi: My kids have all had a slice and they are aged 3, 5, 7 so I'm bot worried about it for my own kids. Nobody fell down drunk.

Dh suggested reducing the vodka to 1/4 cup (to eliminate any worry about it) but I would have to replace it with something, right? What would I replace it with?

Unless it is a flavored vodka, why have it in the cake?

Replace the vodka with about 1/4 cup water and see if it changes the cake. I'd bet it doesn't much.

That said, all of my extracts are alcohol based. But the purpose of alcohol in this recipe is questionable for kids and I think can be substituted easily. so why not skip it.

I thought that maybe chemically it was important to the cake. I replaced it with buttermilk yesterday as an experiment but it took really long to bake and had a dark crust on the outside by the time the center had cooked fully.

I will try water.