What's on my mind? cake.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about cake.  On Monday, I spent a good part of my morning searching for a bundt cake recipe and continued this search in the evening.  The search continued the next day. There are many other things I could be doing with my time, such as reading the 3 history books due next week or researching the history of preschool in the United States for my 15 page paper.  Instead, researching countless cake recipes has become my priority. And to be honest, I am okay with this. How many times are you a second semester senior in college? Once. And I'm going to celebrate this time by making bundt cake. I think I need to find more things to celebrate by making cake, birthdays just aren't enough.  I have never made a bundt cake during my 22 years of life, but the bundt pan I received from Pat around Christmas was looking awfully lonely on the shelf. I didn't know exactly what type of bundt cake I wanted to bake and was slightly overwhelmed as I came across hundreds of different recipes-chocolate, apple spice, lemon blueberry, vanilla bean with yogurt...I knew the perfect recipe when I saw it: chocolate stout bundt cake.
When I went to the store to purchase a single bottle of stout, I was not successful in finding any single bottles of Guinness.  After a bit of searching, I came across a coffee stout crafted by the New Glarus Brewery.  I couldn't have asked for a better beer to put in a chocolate cake.

Next thing I knew, I was spending a beautiful spring afternoon baking a bundt cake that contained chocolate and stout.  To begin, you heat the required amount of stout and butter on the stove, which makes a very aromatic, foamy mixture.  Then you realize that the recipe doesn't call for the entire bottle of beer, so you enjoy the remaining beer as the sun pours in through your kitchen window.  And then you realize that there is nothing you would rather be doing on a Wednesday, then baking a chocolate bundt cake, drinking a beer and listening to Jack Johnson.  Somethings just work out perfectly.

Back to the cake...its a fairly simple recipe.  I made a few changes to the recipe: I
added 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips to the batter; of course this was in addition to the chips in the ganache.  It just didn't seem right not to add some chocolate bits to the batter.  I also had to bake the cake for much longer than suggested, as it was still batter-like after only 35 minutes.  The cake stayed in the over for about 55 minutes.  Lastly, I didn't add instant coffee granules to the ganache because I did not have any on hand.  No loss there-it was heavenly.  The ganache added to the presentation of the cake- it dripped down the sides just a tiny bit until it hardened.  Oh, what a beautiful first bundt cake experience this was.

 

 

  

Chocolate Stout Cake (from smittenkitchen.com)
Adapted from the Barrington Brewery in Great Barrington, MA via Bon Appetit
.
1 cup stout (such as Guinness)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
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
6 ounces good semisweet chocolate chips
6 tablespoons heavy cream
3/4 teaspoon instant coffee granules
Cake prep:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter or spray a bundt pan well; make sure you get in all of the nooks and crannies. (Some people even go so far as to brush the inside of their bundt pans with melted butter–you cannot be too careful!). 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. Cool slightly.
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. 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 minutes. Transfer cake to rack; cool completely in the pan, then turn cake out onto rack for drizzling ganache. For the ganache, melt the chocolate, heavy cream, and coffee in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally. Drizzle over the top of cooled cake.

***You can always leave the cake in the pan longer than 10 mintues before inverting onto a cake plate.  This will reduce the chances that the cake will stick to the pan.