Deep Dark Chocolate Stout Cake #2, or the Accidental Vegan Cake (with optional non-vegan Chocolate Ganache)

 

Don’t get me wrong; I have absolutely nothing against vegans. It’s just that no one in my house happens to be one.  So when I set out a while ago to improve on my original Extra Stout Extra Chocolate Cake  , the furthest thing from my mind was making a vegan cake. The foremost thing on my mind? Lack of eggs in my refrigerator.  Yes, even renowned foodies occasionally run out of the basics…I’ll have six kinds of brown sugar in the house, but not eggs. Such is my life.

 

 

This is now the second time I’ve made this cake; last time it went so fast I didn’t get any pictures, and we almost suffered the same fate this time. Next time I’ll try and snap more pictures before the resident chocoholics get hold of the thing. Please don’t let the sad pictures (or the fact that it’s vegan) stop you from making this cake – it’s super easy, sinfully delicious, and probably the moistest chocolate cake you will ever eat in your life. Maybe it’s the weird ingredients (beer and vinegar? Really? ) or maybe those vegans do know something…nah, I’m sorry, I can’t go there.  Props to you if that’s your calling, but I can’t give up my meat, cheese and butter  quite yet.  Although… one cool side effect of this cake being vegan is that it’s also easy to make kosher pareve;  I do have friends that will appreciate that.  To keep this truly vegan (or pareve) just make sure your ingredients are also vegan / pareve; you’ll also need to skip this ganache, though that’s not necessarily a problem – this cake is delicious plain, or with a shake of powdered sugar.  You could also use a non-dairy milk (I’ve never done it but I’ve seen plenty of recipes out there) , or you could try using a buttercream that’s made with vegan or pareve margarine instead of butter (again, not something I have experience with…but go for it !) If real cream from real cows isn’t a problem for you…go for the ganache. I said this in the first recipe, but it bears repeating: while “chocolate ganache” sounds all fancy and pastry-chefish, in reality it’s just chopped up chocolate melted with heavy cream and beaten with a whisk until it’s silky, smooth and sexy.  That’s all there is to it. You do need to use bars or chunks of chocolate (chocolate chips are formulated differently than regular chocolate; they have less cocoa butter and more oil, and they don’t play as nicely with the cream in this particular application); whatever they sell in your supermarket in bar form will be fine (Ghirardelli is pretty widely available, and a damn fine baking chocolate. No, I don’t get paid to say that :) )

 

Oh, and I should have probably mentioned this in the beginning; if you’ve made it this far and the voices in your head are still saying things like “Beer in cake? EW!” or “but I don’t like Guinness!” politely tell them to go pound sand (or let them eat cake !) One of the reasons people like Guinness (and other stouts) so much is that it’s deep, dark, and - yes – chocolately. You’re basically just using that to your advantage here. And yes, most liquor stores will sell you one can or bottle of stout – although really, you should buy more. Stout is a beautiful thing!

 

 

Deep Dark Chocolate Stout Cake

(thanks to  A Whisk and a Spoon for the inspiration)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder (Hershey’s Special Dark is amazing here)

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cup (10 oz) Guinness or other stout

1 tsp espresso powder or instant coffee   

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a  9” nonstick round cake pan liberally with cooking spray, then line with parchment paper and lightly spray the parchment. 

Whisk flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.

In a separate large bowl mix together stout, coffee powder, vanilla and vinegar.  Stir into the flour mixture and start to mix it together, then add your oil and combine until you have a smooth batter (large whisk works well here). 

Pour into prepared pan.  Place in oven and bake for 30-35 minutes.  Check with toothpick – it will still stick and look moist, but shouldn’t look like gobs of raw batter.  Remove from oven and let cool completely on rack, then turn out onto cake plate and peel off the parchment.

Dust cake with powdered sugar, or cover with ganache

Chocolate Ganache

8 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped (will not work as well with chips)

½ cup heavy cream

Melt the chocolate and heavy cream in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally. Drizzle / spread over the top of cooled cake.

Chocolate Ricotta Icebox Cake

summertime chocolate perfection...and no baking ! it's magically delicious !  

Chocolate cake in the heat of summer can be a bit of a tricky proposition. Certainly, you don't want to eat anything warm. Even cakes that are usually eaten cold - like, say, cheesecake - require turning on the oven, which seems a bit of a waste (especially when you have 3 AC's going full blast). Plus you really don't want to eat anything so heavy that it might cause you to pass out into the pool. And sure, you can always do a chocolate mousse or something instead...but what if you just need cake ? Like, cake you can stick birthday candles in and pass out slices of ?

Readers, I think I found the solution :

Sadly, I only got to snap the slices after it was almost all gone...with two men with forks looking over my shoulder waiting for the last piece. Trust me when I say it served up MUCH neater than this !!

Well, actually, Martha Stewart really found it. And truth be told, my original intent wasn't to beat the heat; my mother had requested one of my "decadent flourless chocolate cakes" for her birthday/retirement party (turning 65 will do that to you :).) I have a few cakes that fit that bill, but unfortunately they all involve nuts - and we had a possible attendee with a severe allergy. Clearly, a new recipe was in order. I'd been thinking about trying to make a cake with a really delicious ricotta cheese that we've been buying at Russo's...and I knew I wanted to make something chocolate. Googled "ricotta" and chocolate"...and before I knew it, I had a new favorite summer chocolate cake. And - super bonus - there was no turning on of the oven ! Yes, I love it when a plan comes together...

Top to bottom - killer ricotta, chocolate wafers (in package and deployed), Ghiradelli chocolate

I think one of the keys to this cake is that you absolutely have to use quality ingredients - you'll see that there aren't too many actual ingredients in this thing, so you'll really want to make sure the few you use are the best stuff you can possibly get. The ricotta I used in this is from a New England company called Liuzzi Angeloni and it is a revelation -a big muffin-top bulge of cheese, packaged in little white pails with tiny holes and water all around to keep it fresh. It tastes like no ricotta you've ever had - creamy, slightly sweet and a little tangy at the same time. We've been known to eat it by itself on a plate, with a little salt, pepper, olive oil and fresh basil snipped over...but I digress; back to dessert. Use the best ricotta you can find, as local as you can get (I'm also itching to try and make my own, which would be perfect for this). Oh, and go for the full fat instead of the part skim - you'll taste the difference, and it's not like you're going to eat this every day. (Or maybe you are...hey, whatever does it for you :) Quality chocolate is also key (Ghirardelli is a reliable standby you can find in most supermarkets), and the Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers are absolutely necessary - they're the perfect thickness to make this whole thing work. Do not be tempted to grind them up - they form a solid base for the cake layers to set up on, and then absorb just enough moisture to turn into a delicious cake-like layer and base...it's like magic !   The whole thing turns out like a cross between a chocolate mousse and the smoothest cheesecake you've ever had...definite Culinary Orgasm.

Chocolate Ricotta Icebox Cake

Adapted from Martha Stewart

Nonstick cooking spray

16 ounces semisweet chocolate (do not use chips)

30 ounces ricotta cheese, room temperature (see below)
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon Godiva Liquor or Kaluha (optional)
1 package (9 ounces) chocolate wafers (about 44 cookies)
 

Place your ricotta in a strainer (best to line with cheesecloth or even a paper towel) and let as much water drain out as possible. Set aside to let it come to room temperature.

Prepare your pan: Remove sides from a 9-inch round springform pan. Place a sheet of waxed paper over bottom, leaving an overhang; lock sides onto bottom, firmly securing paper. Spray inside of pan with cooking spray; line sides with a strip of waxed paper 28 inches long and wide enough to match the height of your pan (mine was about 3 inches)  

Make chocolate-ricotta mixture: Break 12 ounces of the chocolate into pieces. Place in a double boiler (or a heatproof medium bowl set over, not in, a pan of barely simmering water.) Cook, stirring occasionally, until chocolate has melted, 8 to 10 minutes.

In a food processor (do not use a blender; you need power for this step!) blend ricotta until very smooth, a couple of minutes, scraping down sides of bowl. Add warm chocolate (and liquor if using); blend until smooth. In a large bowl, beat cream until stiff peaks form. With a rubber spatula, gently fold in chocolate-ricotta mixture.

Assemble cake: Arrange half the cookies in an overlapping pattern to cover bottom of pan (see picture). Spoon half the chocolate-ricotta mixture on top of cookies; smooth top. Cover with remaining cookies; top with remaining chocolate-ricotta mixture, and smooth top. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate at least 6 hours and up to 2 days.

This cake is much easier to serve if you can pop it in the freezer for about 30 minutes before serving. Before you put it in the freezer, use a vegetable peeler to shave curls off the last 4 oz of chocolate over top of cake.

After it comes out of the freezer (or just before serving, after adding the chocolate curls) release sides of pan and remove waxed paper from sides.

Wiping the blade after each slice will help immensely!

Extra Stout Extra Chocolate Cake

mmm cake

Chocolate Stout Cake. Chocolate, and stout. Two of my very favorite things, in convenient cake form. That's just bliss, right there. Gaze upon the blissness :

bliss....

With an impending Snowpocalypse primed to hit Boston yesterday, we decided to hunker down with some good comfort food - specifically, Mark's Pasta Bolognese . (As for the snow...we would have barely noticed it in February...but in October, it's kind of a big deal). Mark always craves chocolate after Italian food, we happened to have some Guinness Foreign Extra Stout around (it's like regular Guinness, but even more Gunniess-y...dark, luscious, gorgeous flavor...definitely look for this if you can find it) and I've always wanted to tackle a stout cake...serendipity is a beautiful thing  !

Deb at Smitten Kitchen had a very promising looking entry (as always), which itself was a Bon Appetit adaptation of a cake from the Barrington Brewery in Great Barrington, MA...definitely a lineage I could get behind. Of course, me being me, I have to do extra everything...extra stout , extra dark cocoa powder, and bittersweet chocolate ganache - for that extra chocolate flavor. That's me, extra crazy...sometimes I wonder if I can ever do anything at a normal level :)

By all means, if you have regular stout and cocoa power and chocolate (or your like your chocolate delivered with more sweetness and not so much darkness) and still want to make this cake - go for it. I think it would still be absolutely fantastic, and you won't have that moment of panic that I did when I took it out of the pan and thought I had burnt it. This is by far the blackest cake I have ever seen in my life :

seriously...is this where black holes come from ???

I promise, it really was baked perfectly and not at all burnt..and it has the most delicious, deep chocolately flavor you've ever experienced. If you use a less dark stout and/or chocolate, I suggest adding the 3/4 tsp of coffee powder to the ganache from the original recipe (and some wouldn't go amiss in the cake either) to enhance the chocolate flavor.

The one thing my testers all agreed on is that it needed more of the ganache, so I have upped the amounts below. And for god's sake, don't get scared off by the term "ganache" like it's super advanced ninja foodie stuff...it's just melted chocolate mixed with cream. Like super thick, spreadable hot chocolate :)

Have some fun in the kitchen, and get down with your bad chocolately self !!

Extra Stout Extra Chocolate Cake
adapted from Smitten Kitchen, et al.

1 cup Guinness Foreign Extra Stout (or regular stout)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder (or any unsweetened cocoa powder), plus extra for dusting pan
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips (or just chopped from a bar), or semisweet chips
1/2 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter or spray a bundt pan really well, then butter it again. Seriously, can't be enough butter here...this cake does not like to let go :). Dust the inside of the pan with some cocoa powder too.

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. Let cool somewhat, or you'll end up with scrambled eggs in the next step :)

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. (I suggest adding about a third of the stout mixture first, to temper the eggs - then add the rest). Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 35 - 40 minutes. Transfer cake to rack; cool completely in the pan, then turn cake out onto rack for drizzling ganache.



Ganache:

For the ganache, melt the chocolate and heavy cream in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally. Drizzle / spread over the top of cooled cake.

wedding bells and chocolate tarts

the infamous Mexican Chocolate Tart with Chipotle-Glazed Pecans

Recently, one of our favorite neighbors of 20+ years went and did himself a crazy thing...done got himself hitched !!

Well, I'm kidding about the crazy part - his new wife is really an absolute sweetheart and we sincerely could not be happier for them. The event itself was a quickie City Hall jaunt, but the backyard party afterwards was epic...and we got to cook, which was even better !! Unfortunately, I was too busy to photograph much, but I've thrown a few in here just for the heck of it  - see the end of the blog. I've also included the recipe for my Mexican Chocolate Tart with Chipotle-Glazed Pecans. This tart is epic as well - truly a Culinary Orgasm. Don't let the paring of sweet chocolate and spicy chipotle powder scare you off. It's not burning hot, nothing like that at all...the spice just wakes up your taste buds so you can appreciate the chocolate that much more. Try and use the best chocolate you can get for this...there's not a lot else in it, and if you use cheap chocolate you'll definitely regret it. I use a mixture of high-quality bittersweet and semisweet, but you can use 4 oz of one instead of 2 and 2 if you'd rather...if you like things a bit sweeter go with straight semi; for super dark go with bitter.

Mexican Chocolate is a unique product, and is worth the search for not only this tart but for delicious Mexican Hot Chocolate. It comes in disks with score marks (so you can break it apart and add it to your mug of hot milk), has a rough, grainy texture, and is usually lightly spiced with cinnamon. The real deal is is absolutely essential in this tart. Taza is a locally made version which is fantastic (available at Whole Foods, Russo's, and other foodie haunts - I use the cinnamon version which is the traditional Mexican, though one of these days I may experiment with the other flavors.) Ibarra is much easier to find and will work as well, and my local Stop + Shop carries a Nestle version called Abuelita which looks a lot like the Ibarra and will certainly do the trick.

Oh, and beware the pecans...easy to make and definitely worth the time as they are seriously, seriously addictive.

The menu (links go to the blog entries with recipes :

Smoked Shrimp with Cajun Remoulade
Frijoles Borrachos with Pepperjack Cornbread
Jamaican Jerk Chicken (wings, this time)
Steak Tips
Grilled Vegetables (on skewers)

Mexican Chocolate Tart with Chipotle Glazed Pecans

Crust
1 cup chocolate wafer cookie crumbs (about half of one 9-ounce package cookies, finely ground in processor)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Filling
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 disk Mexican chocolate (Taza preferred), chopped
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
chipotle powder, to taste (start with 1/8 tsp)

Chipotle Glazed Pecans (see below)

Lightly sweetened whipped cream


For crust:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Blend first 4 ingredients in processor. Add melted butter; process until crumbs are moistened. Press crumbs into 9-inch-diameter tart pan with removable bottom, to within 1/8 inch of top. Bake until set, about 10 minutes. Cool on rack.


For filling:

Bring cream to simmer in medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Add chocolates; whisk until melted. Add butter, 1 piece at a time; whisk until smooth. Whisk in vanilla, cinnamon, salt and chipotle powder (enough so that you can taste it, but not so much as to make it spicy hot.) Pour filling into crust. Chill until filling begins to set, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Arrange nuts in concentric circles atop tart. Chill until set, about 4 hours. Serve tart with whipped cream.


Chipotle Glazed Pecans

1 egg white
2 tablespoons champagne or ginger ale
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon chipotle powder
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups pecan halves


Preheat the oven to 250 F. Line cookie sheet with foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray.

Whisk egg white, add champagne (or ginger ale), salt, cinnamon, chipotle, sugar and pecan halves.Fold this together until the nuts are evenly coated.

Spread the mixture out onto the pan, single layer. Bake at 250 degrees for 1 1/2 hours until the coating is absorbed and the pecans appear dry, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

When they are cooled store at room temperature in an airtight container. This will make more than you need...not a problem as they are great on their own !

chocolate, ready for chopping

the blushing bride

love the sleeves..

Jerk Chicken

veggies