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I have a confession to make, GWS. I don’t like beer. Actually, to be more exact, I don’t really like the taste of alcohol in general. So, for my NICSA entry, I decided to make something that tastes good despite having beer as a key ingredient: a chocolate stout cake, with dried cranberries reconstituted in amaretto and Irish cream liqueur icing... ... and then since I also hate nuts, I decided to add some pecans to it too, because why the gently caress not? The base recipe here came from a family friend of ours. This lady lives in a cool old house from the 1840s that she and her husband spent years restoring, that’s now a registered historic landmark, and every now and then she has dinner parties at this place that are always amazing. This recipe comes from one of those dinners, just a few days after my mom passed away. The menu from that night was a loving awesome shrimp scampi pasta, and this cake. Unfortunately I’m still waiting for her to give me that scampi recipe, so I wasn’t able to make it for this contest, but I do have the stout cake recipe, so we’ll make that and pray to God that it’s interesting enough to compete. So without further ado, let’s get to the ingredients and pics! Ingredients:  For the cake...
 For the icing...
Heat your oven to 350°, and grease up 2 to 4 8” cake pans (depending on how many layers you want, I did 2). Then start reconstituting your cranberries.  In a small saucepan, combine your amaretto and 1/4 cup of your sugar on low heat, and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add the cranberries, and cover, still on low heat, for about 20 or 30 minutes. When they’re done, the cranberries should swell up and peak out the top of the amaretto.   Meanwhile, prepare your chocolate beer mixture.  Get another small saucepan (or a medium one, or a big one, gently caress I don’t care), combine your beer and a cup of butter, and put it on medium heat until the butter is melted.  Remove the beer-butter mix from the heat, then whisk in your cocoa powder until everything is smooth and fully mixed. Set this aside.  Now go ahead and get your pecans ready. Put your pecans in your food processor and pulse a few times to chop them.  ... then realize that a food processor is a loving poo poo tool for this job, half your pecans are barely chopped at all and the other half are pulverized to dust, so now you have to get ANOTHER 1 1/2 cups of pecans and start over by hand. gently caress   Using a knife, chop your pecans up into nice big pieces, then put them in a bowl and set them aside.  Mix your flour and baking soda together in a small bowl and set that aside too.  In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, mix together your eggs, the remaining 1 3/4 cups of your sugar, the sour cream, and the vanilla extract. Once all of this is mixed together, alternate adding little bits at a time of your flour/baking soda mixture and your beer/butter/cocoa mixture, until everything is combined and the mixture is smooth.        Mix the entire mixture on medium speed for an additional 3 to 4 minutes, then go down to a lower speed (like a hand-mix speed I guess), add your reconstituted cranberries and pecans, and mix this on low speed (or by hand) for 1 to 2 minutes.  Pour the whole mixture into your cake pans and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the cake separates from the edges of the pans and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.   While that’s happening, make your icing. Combine 2 cups of softened unsalted butter with your powdered sugar in your stand mixer until smooth. This is easier if you cut the butter into small chunks first, which I learned the hard way.   Once that’s mixed, add your softened cream cheese and mix again until smooth and there are no lumps.  Last but not least, add your Irish cream and mix until fluffy.   You will likely have a ton of icing left over once your cake is frosted. Enjoy! When your cakes are done, transfer them to a wire rack to cool (in their pans) for 10 minutes, then remove them from the pans and let them cool a bit longer. You don’t want your icing to melt when you apply it.  Then when the cakes are cool, ice the tops of each one, stack them on top of each other, ice the sides, and voila! You’re done!   And there you have it! A delicious, classy, boozy cake that even I could eat if it didn’t have those loving nuts in it! gently caress! The Guinness adds a nice complexity to the chocolate, and the amaretto does the same to the cranberries. Sounds a bit weird, but it’s actually really good! Give it a try!
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Apr 28, 2019 23:06
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| # ? May 5, 2024 23:45 |
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This sounds good and I hope to try it soon. I usually find that cake + frosting recipes make far too much frosting, to the point where I now halve the recipe by default (4 sticks of butter, what the gently caress?). It'll be plenty provided you do a proper crumb coat first.
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Apr 28, 2019 23:21
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An awesome entry! Glad you got to experiment and step out of your comfort zone.
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Apr 30, 2019 18:49
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This is freaking awesome. Also, you are adorable.
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May 1, 2019 10:37
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The cake looks amazingly good
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May 2, 2019 03:18
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