Friday, May 01, 2009

Cake? or death?

Dan asked for chocolate cake, so I decided to look for a chocolate cake recipe I hadn't made before (I'm always up for a challenge!) I turned first to my favorite recipe site, Smitten Kitchen, because I knew that rather than a buttercream frosting I wanted to do a chocolate ganache. So I put that search term into her seach engine and found a recipe for Chocolate Stout cake. Dan likes chocolate, and he likes beer, so I thought this sounded right up his alley. I did make a few changes to the recipe, so here in all its glory is my version of SK's Chocolate Stout Cake.

Chocolate Stout Cake ala MLE

1 cup stout (I used extra stout Guinness)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Dutch-process)
2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 cup sugar (her recipe called for 2 cups; I thought that was a little much so cut the sugar)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup nonfat greek yogurt (her recipe called for sour cream; I think nonfat greek yogurt works just as well in most cases)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and sugar (I use sugar instead of flour for dark cakes) two 8 or 9 inch cake pans. Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Beat eggs and yogurt in another large bowl to blend. Slowly add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and stir just to combine. Add flour mixture a bit at a time and stir until completely combined. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes. Transfer cake to rack; cool completely in the pans, then turn one cake out onto plate for drizzling ganache.

Ganache:

6 ounces (3/4 cup) good semisweet chocolate chips (plus I added a bit of 82% dark chocolate we got at Target, I think it's Ghirardelli brand)
6 tablespoons whipping cream
1-2 tsp Irish whiskey for flavoring

Melt the chocolate and cream in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally. Add whiskey. Drizzle in between layers and over the top of cooled cake.

4 comments:

Hillary said...

mmm yummy
I've made Nigella's Guinness cake - this sounds similar. It was topped with cream cheese icing though. Ganache sounds better :)

Crafty Mama said...

Oh wow....this sounds awesome!

tmjackson said...

Guh! That sounds amazing! As soon as I have an oven again, I'm making that bad boy. And I've never heard of using sugar instead of flour for the pans - very interesting.

tmjackson said...

Also...

"Uh, cake for me, too, please!"