Recipe(tried): Home Bakery Pink Champagne Cake (copycat recipe, Peggy's Champagne Cake)

This article is from the Vallejo Times Herald. The filling is the secret - Pastry Pride. I use whipped heavy cream with a touch of vanilla for the icing. Follow the balance of the recipe and you will have the perfect Champagne
Cake.

---

RECIPE A PIECE OF CAKE
By Gene Silverman, Times-Herald Food Editor

This is absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt the very last recipe for Champagne Cake I will run. The only reason I am doing this is that this particular recipe is magnificent. You couldn't possibly wish for a more delicious cake.

I served it to a young woman recently, someone who had never eaten the Home Bakery's version, and she said it was the most wonderful cake she'd ever eaten, I most certainly ate of it myself and was completely bowled over.

It came from the kitchen of Pggy Ochs, "If it isn't exactly like the Home Bakery's Champagne Cake, it's so close the difference isn't significant," Peggy said when she brought the cake to me.

I opened the pink box ("Even the box is like the Home Bakery's," Peggy said,) and I gasped. "It looks exactly like the original." I said, as soon as I could catch my breath.

Those of you who were fans of the Home Bakery will be happy with this cake and those who've never bad the pleasure will do so when they make this recipe.

The way Peggy and a friend figured out the recipe was to go to the Home Bakery, buy a slice of Champagne Cake and try to duplicate it. Peggy kept at it until she came up with the following recipe. I think she should get a medal.

Here it is, in her own words, plus a few of mine.

PEGGY'S CHAMPAGNE CAKE

2 boxes (2 layer-size) Betty Crocker white cake mix
2/3 cup oil, minus a little
2 1/2 cups water
3 egg whites plus 2 whole eggs

Combine ingredients, mix and bake until done in two 9-inch cake pans.

Split the (cooled) layers. Fill layers with champagne filling (below) and frosting with buttercream icing that has been tinted a light pink. Press shaved pink chocolate (pastels) on the sides. Pipe globs of filling into the shape of a mushroom cap around the top edge of the cake and sprinkle tops of tile dollops with a little shaved pink chocolate.

FILLING

1 quart Pastry Pride
1 package instant French vanilla pudding or vanilla pudding
About 3/4 cup cheap sherry wine

Peggy says it is not necessary to use champagne. Mix ingredients and use as filling.