Chocolate and Beer...yummmm

It's been a while, I haven't really been cooking much worth blogging about unless you think salad makes for some thrilling blog material. I also made a completely failed attemt at "chocolate pudding cake" similar to I think Ashley's failed attempt at some kind of crock pot cake.  Basically, never trust a recipe that tells you to pour water on top of batter and bake it.

The other day though, mom asked me to make my aunt Martha a birthday cake. 

The cookbook Heavenly Cakes was my first stop.  But those cakes are somewhat fussy, and I wanted a pretty easy chocolate cake, just different than the ol' standard.  So I turned to the Bon Appetit Desserts cookbook I got last Christmas.  It hasn't failed me yet and provided a recipe that combines two of my favorite things: chocolate and beer!

Chocolate Stout Cake turned out to be delicious.  The cake part was really moist and light and you'd hardly notice the beer except for that something in the background that tasted a little different than the usual cake.  It calls for stout but I used what I had handy which was New Belgium 1554 which is technically a black ale.  But the beer is dark, toasty, and tastes like it would go with chocolate so I went for it.  The good thing about this is it will be interesting to see how the flavor changes depending on what beer you use.  So obviously I will have to make this cake more often and test it out.

My version of the recipe is 1/2 of what the original recipe calls for.  It would have been a huge cake; as it is, the 1/2 version was pretty damn tasty and rich enough.

Icing



Chop, melt, stir and voila!

 

1 Cup heavy whipping cream

½ lb. bitter or semi-sweet choc. (I used Ghirardelli 60%)

 
Bring cream to a simmer and then add the chocolate, stir until it’s all melted and smooth.  Put the mixture in a bowl in the fridge and stir frequently until it’s a spreadable mixture.  Probably 1-2 hrs before you need it to ice the cake.
 



Cake
1 Cup stout beer

1 Cup unsalted butter cut into cubes

¾ Cup unsweetened Dutch processed cocoa

2 Cups Flour

2 Cups Sugar

1 ½ Tsp Baking Soda

½ Tsp. Salt

2 Large Eggs

½ + ½ of a third cup sour cream – (since measuring cups don’t have a spot for a ½ of a third cup I had to eyeball it. Sorry for lack of better measuring) 

Preheat oven to 350, prepare two 8 in. round cake pans with baking spray 

Bring the beer and butter to a simmer in a saucepan, add cocoa and stir until it’s smooth. 

Stir together dry ingredients in one bowl and the eggs and sour cream in another.  Add the beer/chocolate mixture to the eggs and sour cream.  Add that to the dry ingredients and stir until everything is completely combined but not overmixed.

 

Look at those beauties rise!

Divide batter between two pans and bake for about 35 min.  Cool for about 10 min, release cakes from pans and completely cool before icing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then you have a finished cake that tastes delicious, looks sort of impressive and is super easy.  It pretty much uses things I think most people would have in their pantry or are easy to find at any grocery store.  And if I forgot to mention, chocolate cake is my favorite food ever.  Hooray!

 

Happy Birthday Martha!