If you’re anything like us Boyer women, a recipe calling for wine always sounds like a good idea. This Sunshine Wine Cake is great for your end-of-summer celebration. It’s easy to make and is perfect to make to night before a party.

This cake is a joint effort coming from both myself and my mother (Sharon). Benigna’s Creek Vineyard and Winery, the local winery we both work at, is part of a wine trail each year. My mother is put in charge of baking a different dessert with wine in it to serve every year. Several years ago, she adapted an existing recipe into this sweet sunshine cake and it was a hit! Someone even asked her why we weren’t serving it again this year.

Of course, we used one of Benigna’s wines, Sunshine, in our cake. If you live near central PA, we definitely recommend checking them out sometime. You can also have their wine shipped to you if you live in PA. (Unfortunately PA does not allow shipping wine outside the state – check out FreeTheGrapes.org for more information.)

Any sweet white fruity wine will work wonderfully for this cake. You can even substitute water if you’d rather leave out the wine. But where’s the fun in that?

You’ll need these ingredients:

For the cake, you need a yellow cake mix (with pudding in it), eggs, oil, water, and a sweet white fruity wine. If you’re cake mix doesn’t have pudding in it, you’ll also need a package of instant vanilla pudding mix, an additional egg, and additional oil. For the glaze, you need butter or margarine, 10x (powdered) sugar, and some of the same wine used in the cake. We used Benigna’s Sunshine, a sweet white wine made with a Vidal grape that has a citrus flavor to it.

Combine all the cake ingredients in a bowl and beat for 3 minutes. Pour into a greased bundt cake pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

While the cake’s baking, make the glaze. Melt the butter or margarine. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Stir for 1 minute, then remove from heat.

Immediately out of the oven, prick cake with toothpicks. Then pour the glaze evenly over the cake. Save about one third of the glaze to pour over the top of the cake, once it’s removed from the pan.

We recommend making this cake the day before you plan on serving it. Letting it sit overnight to soak up all that yummy wine glaze makes it all the better!

Now if you not a wine lover like us Boyers, you may be wondering: What do I do with my left over wine??? Mix it with your lemonade, of course! I’m sure you have plenty of lemonade mix left from this summer. Whip up a batch of lemonade and mix together equal parts of lemonade and wine. Delicious! Perfect for an end-of-summer party!

Here’s an easy printable recipe to try this cake out for yourself.