photo : Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

It's a cool feeling to see your name printed in the New York Times, even if it's just for a recipe.

I don't know how they made that cake look so beautiful...it's an ugly one, but definitely one of the most delicious around.   You should make it! Alternately, just read the article and salivate.

But I already had the Irish whiskey on the counter to use in Marti Buckley Kilpatrick’s Chocolate Whiskey Cake (a recipe she adapted from Dol Miles, the pastry chef at Frank Stitt’s Bottega restaurant in Birmingham, Ala.).

Ms. Kilpatrick, who lives in San Sebastián, Spain, describes the cake as an ugly frog of a confection, but promises that anyone willing to bet a smooch would be amply rewarded. I thought the cocoa-colored cake, lightly dusted with powdered sugar, was perfectly presentable — especially after I tasted it and then gorged on it.

As Ms. Kilpatrick noted in her description of the recipe, the interplay of coffee, black pepper and cloves is subtle but powerful: “none of these suggests itself, but they unite ... to form a deeply flavored cake ... so moist, so dense, so amazing.”

Exactly.