We're having a nice, slow Saturday. We went out for lunch earlier in the day, and Tommy's spent much of his afternoon laying on the couch with fat-cat Pepper laying across his legs. Tommy was drifting in and out of sleep while watching the Do-It-Yourself Network. It's always a little worrisome when he watches home improvement shows because he gets all crazy with ideas.
So a while back, I bought a big ol' single bottle of Guinness in hopes of trying to make a cake similar to one like what a friend brought to a pot luck recently. It was a delicious cake, all chocolaty with just a little something that made you tilt your head and wonder, "Mmmm.... what is that?" Well, beer's not just for drinking, people! It's for baking, too!
So I started with digging around for a recipe that sounded good. I ended up at a site that has all sorts of amazing Guinness beer recipes, Karrott.com, and I selected the Chocolate Guinness Cake recipe.
Now, I have to preface all of this with a very simple statement: I am not a very talented cake decorator. Just so that your expectations aren't set too high.
Here's the final picture of this interesting cake. It's not super ugly, I mean, it is chocolate after all.
Here's the recipe:
Guinness Chocolate Cake
Shortening and cocoa powder for dusting the pans
1 cup butter
1 cup Guinness
2/3 cup dark cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
Start by heating the oven to 350° F. Lightly dust two greased 8 inch pans with cocoa powder; set aside.
In a medium saucepan over medium heat combine butter, Guinness, and cocoa powder until butter melts. Pour into bowl and let cool. Make a note to yourself that just because this looks absolutely divine, there is no sugar in this mixture and the temptation to lick your fingers, the spatula or anything else should be avoided!
Next, sift together the salt, flour, sugar and soda. Add the cooled Guinness/chocolate mixture to the dry ingredients and beat until just combined. Add the eggs and sour cream and beat until mixed. Dividing evenly, pour batter into prepared pans and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Let cool on racks.
Once the cakes are cooled, it's time to make the frostings. I used two types on this one. The Guinness Chocolate Frosting comes from the same website as the cake recipe, just for reference. I changed it up a little because I think that the semi-sweet chocolate has to be tempered a little bit with milk chocolate. The Bailey's Frosting comes from a recipe I had already in my arsenal, but I just substituted milk with the Bailey's liqueur.
Guinness Chocolate Frosting
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk chocolate chips
3 Tbsp butter
5 Tbsp Guinness
5 Tbsp milk
**Note before you start: My frosting seemed to set up very fast, making it difficult to spread after just a few minutes, so you might want to be prepared and work quickly. To help make spreading easier, I ran my frosting spatula under hot water occasionally.**
Put chocolate chips and butter in microwave-safe bowl. Heat for 1 minute; stir. Heat for 30 seconds, stir. Repeat until most chips are melted and you can stir them into a smooth sauce. Put into mixing bowl. Add Guinness and milk, beating on medium-high speed. Spread in between the two layers of the cake and then frost top and sides of cake.
Baileys Buttercream Frosting
1/2 cup butter, softened
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup Bailey's
2 1/2 to 3 cups powdered sugar
Put butter and cream cheese into mixer and beat until light and fluffy. Add Bailey's and combine. Add powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time while beating on high until you reach frosting consistency. For mine today, I should have added a little more powdered sugar, as my frosting needed to be a little more stiff for better piping. Pipe onto cakes on top of the Guinness Chocolate Frosting.
I couldn't help myself but to make another cake. I made a Pistachio Bundt Cake. The original recipe for this was given to me by my cousin, Bree, and it called for a yellow cake mix. I didn't have a cake mix handy today without going to the dread store, so I did my best at coming up with a from-scratch recipe for it. It you prefer to try it using the cake mix recipe (which is very easy and very, very delicious), you can find it here: Pistachio Pound Cake
For this from scratch recipe, here's the ingredient list:
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 pkg (3.4 oz each) instant pistachio pudding
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup oil
4 eggs
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 tsp cinnamon
powdered sugar for dusting
In large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and instant pudding. Add sour cream, oil, and eggs. Combine well. Batter will be very, very thick. Because it is so thick, I mix it by hand instead of using my mixer.
Spray a bundt pan generously with non-stick spray. Spoon about half of the batter into the pan. In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, pecans and cinnamon. Spoon the cinnamon mixture on top of the batter, then cover the cinnamon layer with the remainder of the cake batter and spread out so that the cinnamon layer is completely covered.
Bake in 350 degree oven for 55 minutes or until wooden pick inserted into cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for about 10 - 15 minutes and then invert onto platter and let cool completely.
Dust with powdered sugar to make it pretty!
As I finish up this entry, Tommy's still on the couch, Pepper is still laying across his legs, and Tommy has moved on to watching one of the several renditions of the Fast and Furious movies. Yes, it is hours later, and he has been up a time or two to get another beer. Tommy has declared that he now knows exactly how he wants to redo the garage to create his man cave. Could be interesting.
Poor ol' Bender has been bored out of his mind today. When I bake, he insists on going outside until I'm done. It was a nice day for it, and I tried to entice him to play fetch for a bit, but he didn't want to for whatever reason.
Until next time, peeps!
Enjoy!
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