Hello Good - IZZE Contest and Giveaway

**Giveaway is closed**

Hello friends, and happy Friday! I was given a head's up from IZZE Sparkling Juice yesterday about their ongoing contest, Hello Good, celebrating the good moments in life.

To enter, simply snap a picture of yourself enjoying your favorite IZZE beverage and submit it to the IZZE Facebook page. Upon submission, you'll receive a $1 off IZZE coupon, and you'll be entered to win free year's supply of IZZE! The contest runs through Sunday, with a winner picked everyday. You can enter everyday if you choose.

I'm also hosting a giveaway right here. One winner will receive a prize pack that includes -

2 10 Year Anniversary IZZE T-shirts
2 Royal Blue IZZE T-Shirts
1 4-Pack of IZZE Sparkling Juice

Pretty nifty! Simply leave a comment and tell me what which IZZE flavor is your favorite. If you've never tried it before, tell me which you'd like to try. Winner will be chosen at noon on Tuesday. Open to U.S. residents only.

Since I was in the mood for IZZE, I went to the store to pick up a pack (using my own money) to guzzle and to bake. That's right, I baked a sparkling cake. Unlike the last cake I made with IZZE, this one is much more simple. This hearty pound cake is perfectly snackable and doesn't have to be saved for dessert. I changed up the original recipe a bit, adjusting the sugar and leavening amounts as well as method of preparation, but it's mostly the same. Honestly, the apple IZZE isn't very pronounce. The cake does taste incredibly good, though. Recipe is after the jump.

(Full disclosure: I received a prize pack from IZZE in exchange for this post, but I was not otherwise compensated. Opinions are my own.)

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IZZE Sparkling Pound Cake
Recipe adapted from Ostblog's Seltzer Cake

Ingredients -

4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2/3 cup vegetable oil
3 2/3 cups flour
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2/3 cup IZZE Apple Sparkling Juice

Directions -

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a 9-inch loaf pan well; set aside. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl.
2. Add eggs and sugar to a large mixing bowl. Using a mixer, beat on medium-high until mixture is pale and thickened, 2 minutes. Mix in vanilla extract. With mixer running, stream in vegetable oil until blended. Fold in dry ingredients, mixing just until a trace of flour remains. Pour in IZZE and fold into batter just until smooth.
3. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour; cover top of cake with a piece of foil and continue cooking for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on wire rack for 10 minutes. Run a knife along the edges, then remove from pan. Let cool for another 10 minutes before slicing.

IZZEcake

Remember the cake I talked about? Here it is! Since the juices are so good, I wanted to incorporate them in a baked treat. I have always been curious about champagne cakes, so I decided to use a recipe for one, replacing the champagne with IZZE Sparkling Blackberry juice.

I ran into some trouble along the way. The cake baked up fine, though the tops stuck to the cooling rack, and I had trouble lifting them off without tearing. This wouldn't have mattered much, except I sliced each layer in half to create a four layer cake. In the end, you can't tell.

My other snafu was the icing. I settled on making a confectioners' sugar based buttercream (I wouldn't suggest it -- it's too sweet), but ran out of sugar. I had just enough to ice between the layers and give the cake a crumb coat.
Since I couldn't leave it unfinished, I figured I'd make a half a recipe of 7-minute icing. Halfway along the way, I remembered how unstable it is, as it begins to dissolve after a day. No problem. Beating in butter will turn it into a Swiss meringue buttercream of sorts, right? The problem I encountered here was that I only had half a stick of unsalted butter in the fridge, which wasn't enough. As I whipped the butter into the frosting at high speed, I frantically attempted to soften frozen butter in the microwave. I didn't quite succeed at this, though I got enough softened butter chunks to make it work. After an extra stick and a half of butter, the buttercream whipped up into something resembling icing. A bit grainy, but I didn't mind.

The taste of the finished cake is delicious, even though you can tell there are two icings. The flavor of the IZZE isn't strong, but it gives the cake a fruity essence so I'd call it a success.

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If you would like the recipe, click through to this page. Other than replacing the champagne with the juice, I decreased the sugar to 1 1/2 cups to account for the sweetness the juice contains. I didn't use the icing from the recipe.