Feeding Friendship: Irish Fare

Happy St. Patrick's Day, readers! In honor of the upcoming holiday, Ellie chose Irish food as our theme this time around. The Irish food you'll find most typically in our house is soda bread. I usually make Grandpa McAndrew's recipe (someone's grandpa, but not mine) from AllRecipes.com and add 1/2 tsp of salt to it. It's a pretty dense bread though, so you might also want to try this recipe from a Martha Stewart staffer's mother. But I make that all the time, so I wanted to branch out for the blog this time. With a week out of town and the cold that ensued from air travel, I didn't have much baking time, but when I saw this recipe I knew it was perfect. I acknowledge that there is a low probability that actual Irish people invented this, or even eat this recipe often, but I am certain they would be in favor of it. It combines 3 of many people's favorite vices into one spectacular dessert: beer, coffee, and chocolate. Without further ado, I give you Chocolate (Extra) Stout Layer Cake.

I got this from Bon Appetit's website and it sounded like it was really interesting, so I went out and picked up some Guinness Extra Stout and dark chocolate. I didn't really mean to get extra stout beer, but that was the only Guinness I saw, so that's what I bought. Here is BA's ingredient list: 

Ingredients

cake

• 3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) salted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups plus 3 tablespoons sugar
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 3/4 cup chocolate stout, regular stout, or porter
• 2/3 cup freshly brewed strong coffee

frosting

• 1 pound bittersweet chocolate (54% to 60% cacao), chopped
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

I started out by chopping up my newly acquired unsweetened chocolate. This is not the kind you're going to want to sneak pieces of while chopping- it's pretty gross with no sugar added. 

Ghirardelli 100% cacao 

I threw that in a double boiler and melted it down so it would have time to cool. This is also a good time to put your butter for the frosting out on the counter to come to room temperature. 

Next, I did something really stupid. Have you ever been sick and you just can't get your brain back to 100% for a few days? I've definitely had a case of the stupids recently, and while I was grabbing the dry ingredients for the flour part of the cake mixture, I dumped the first cup of sugar in with the flour. Not good. You are supposed to beat the sugar with the butter separately from the flour. Sigh. So I beat the butter with the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar I didn't throw in the wrong bowl and hoped for the best. I did separate my eggs rather nicely though, so I have documented it for posterity. 

the beaten butter and not quite enough sugar

separated eggs 

Next you add in your egg yolks, one at a time, and then the melted chocolate. 

chocolate Rorschach test

Next it was time for some Guinness Stout and some strong coffee. I used hazelnut flavored coffee because I think it's yummy and am not a huge fan of regular coffee taste. 

As nearly every postcard in Ireland will tell you: Guinness is good for you! 

a little hazelnut french press brewing

After adding the liquids, my batter definitely got a little odd looking and sort of separated. This was fixed by adding the flour mixture and beating well with a hand mixer. 

Much better. I'll spare you the "before"

Next I put my egg whites in my stand mixer for a good beating. I used this time to watch a YouTube video from About.com on how to fold egg whites into batter successfully, never having done it before. I stopped when the whites had formed stiff peaks. 

a peak! 

Apparently the key is just to cut your batter in half with the spatula, turning it over gently, and gently combining the whites with the batter. 

folding in some egg whites

that's some light, fluffy stout batter!

The BA recipe calls for you to bake this in 2 9-inch cake pans and use parchment paper in the pans. In hindsight, I'm sure sure why the paper was necessary. It was convenient for lifting out the cakes to cool, but my paper was very stiff and make the sides of my cake uneven, reproducing the creases in the paper. If I did it again, I would just grease my cake pan well and forget the paper. In my convection oven on 350, the cake was done in 20 minutes, as opposed to 30 in a regular oven setting. 

no schmootz on the toothpick = done! 

While the cake was in the oven, I chopped up more semi sweet chocolate for the frosting and put the heavy cream on to simmer. You add the hot cream to the chopped chocolate, wait a minute, and then whisk until the chocolate is smooth. Observe: 

a mix of chopped baking pieces and chocolate chips

hot cream added

mmm...chocolatey

The recipe calls for espresso powder to be added to the cream. I didn't have any, and didn't want this to be a terribly coffee-flavored dessert, so I tipped in a little vanilla extract instead and called it a day. The frosting is still quite hot and very soupy at this point. I was making this fairly late and thought I might be able to frost the cake the same night I made it, so I put the frosting bowl in the freezer for about 45 minutes until it was a thick, frosting-like consistency. I ended up having to leave it covered in the fridge while I went to work anyway, since frosting a cake at midnight didn't seem like priority anymore, but the freezer trick works. I'll go ahead and say that this is definitely a frosting for those who like their chocolate bittersweet and their desserts not too sweet. I prefer the chocolate sour cream frosting I made at Christmas, but it never hurts to try something new. 

finally frosted! 

Guinness lurking in every bite!

the first piece

This is definitely a grown-up cake and you can tell that it isn't your standard cake mix cake. I kind of like it, and it would be perfect to serve in a pub, but it may not be everyone's favorite.