This falls into the category of “no good deed goes unpunished.”
My daughter-in-law loves my chocolate stout cake. Her birthday was last
weekend, and I decided to make that stout cake even better by using Double Chocolate
Stout from Rogue Ales to give it extra richness and flavor. The night before I
decided to make the cake, an arm that runs up the back of my dishwasher and
over the top to spray water onto the dishes during the cleaning process, broke off. Just spontaneously fell
off. This is an expensive Maytag dishwasher, with a built-in chopper, stainless
steel interior, and only about 18 months old. It’s out of warranty, but I
still consider this to be a new dishwasher. I know I’ve wandered from my point, but
you need to understand that, in addition to making a cake for my
daughter-in-law, I had to wash all of the dishes by hand, standing as I did so, on my gimpy knee (and that is another story). And not only the dishes that I was freshly dirtying, but also the entire load that I had packed into the dishwasher the night before, prior to the arm falling off debacle. Stay with me here, it gets better.
I decided to make a round cake rather than the square one that I
usually make. I thought it would photograph better with the Rogue Stout
bottle in the background. So, I pulled out 2 9-inch cake pans, made up my cake
with the addition of the Chocolate Stout, poured it into the greased and
floured pans, and popped it into the oven. After about fifteen minutes of baking time I heard a bit of a sizzling
sound, accompanied by the smell of burnt chocolate. Apparently (because, as I
always tell you people I don’t bake), I had grabbed 8-inch cake pans instead of 9-inch cake pans, and the batter had run over the top and burned on the bottom of my oven. Deep breath.
At precisely that point I came to learn that the gift card that I was going to send to my daughter-in-law via
email was not available. The company from whom I was buying the card only
offered to mail physical cards, adding that it would take 7 to 10 days for them
to arrive, and at a cost of five dollars for shipping in addition to the price of the
gift card. Well, there was no way I was going to pay five dollars for something
that they would only pay $.50 to ship, so I got dressed, and drove miles to the
store to get a gift card. Done!
I was quite pleased with myself for getting the gift card, and let me add that I
drove through driving rain to do so, so headed home satisfied that my day could
only get better. When I got home I changed out of my “shopping” clothes, and into my comfortable “let’s make a cake” clothes (a rather ratty Mr. Bean T-shirt,
and jeans that were politely declined by Goodwill), and set about to make the
frosting. It was then that I realized I didn’t have quite enough powdered sugar
to do that. At this point, I wasn’t about to get dressed and head to
the supermarket, so came up with the brilliant plan of making half of the frosting with the ingredients
that I had, would frost half of the cake to photograph, and give that half to my son,
daughter-in-law, and grand kids. Genius!
I wanted to photograph the cake with a bottle of Stout in the background, so
you all would know what you’re looking for when you shop for it, and you
should. I love Rogue products (do not get me started on the sublime
deliciousness of their Dead Guy Whiskey, and, boy did I need some NOW!) and wanted to give them a shout out. I
took a variety of photos, like I do, with the bottle standing up in the
background, tilted one way, and then the other, and then decided to lie it
down. It was when my toes started to get wet that I was reminded that I had
opened that bottle to use the stout in the cake. That not-so-carefully-replaced
cap had come off and it poured all over the counter, down the front of the
cabinets, and onto my toes.
Here is the recipe for the cake. It was delicious. You would think that my tale
of woe ended here, but no. I enjoyed my cake, while recovering from a
Tupperware injury, acquired when I reached for the right size container to
package things up to send home with my son, and the remaining of them came
showering down on me in one giant, plastic, avalanche. At this point, you may
want to re-read the first line of this overly long blog post. Yep, truth. Next
year I’m buying that girl a cake.
Stout Cake Gone Rogue
1 cup Rogue Double Chocolate Stout
1 cups (2 sticks) butter
3/4 cup Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 9”
cake pans. Set aside. Bring stout and
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 salt in large bowl to
blend; set aside. Using an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment,
beat eggs and sour cream until well blended. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg
mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow
speed.
Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 30 minutes or until tester inserted into
center of cake comes out clean. Transfer to rack to cool for 5 minutes and then invert onto a rack to cool completely. When cool, top with
chocolate frosting.
Rogue Chocolate Frosting
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
½ cup butter, softened
2-1/4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
4 tablespoons Rogue Double Chocolate Stout
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Melt chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler. Stir
until smooth; set aside to cool for 10 minutes. In a large bowl, beat
butter until creamy. Gradually beat in confectioner’s sugar alternately
with stout. Add melted chocolate and vanilla and beat at high
speed until smooth and creamy. Frosts one cake.
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