Guinness Chocolate Cake with Kahlua-Chocolate Ganache

A few weeks ago I got this idea in my head that one could make a cake with beer and it would taste good, and I haven’t been able to forget this crazy idea. Maybe it isn’t so crazy, as I googled beer cake and did find a few possibilities. I decided to make my own chocolate-beer cake, selecting Guinness as the beer of choice – a tasty, chocolate stout that would mix well with chocolate, deepening the flavor of the cake, and being just as tasty to drink what didn’t end up in the cake. ☺ I also experimented with using less sugar, to bring out the flavor the Guinness, and the result was a moist cake with a subtle beer flavor that was complemented well with the sweeter Kahlua ganache topping (Baileys would have been great in the ganache as well!) Overall, this recipe yielded 6 small bundts and two cupcakes with the leftover batter.

Guinness Chocolate Cake
2 cups all purpose flour
½ Cup butter flavored shortening
1¼ - 2 Cups sugar (I used less because I wanted the flavor of the Guinness to come out more but adding the full 2 cups would also be delicious ☺)
¾ Cup unsweetened cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1½ tsp baking powder
1 cup ½ and ½
2 eggs
1¼ cup Guinness
2½ tsp Vanilla

In a large bowl, cream together Crisco and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat well. In a separate smaller bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda and powder until mixed. To creamed Crisco/sugar/eggs, add dry ingredients and liquids, and mix well. Grease pans (I chose small bundt pans) and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven on the top rackfor approximately 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool and remove from pan, level the bottom of the bundts with a serrated knife, turn right-side up and glaze with ganache:

Chocolate-Kahlua Ganache
2 oz bittersweet chocolate
1 tblsp butter
2 tblsp ½ and ½
1 tblsp Kahlua
1 tblsp powdered sugar

Melt chocolate and butter in the microwave, mixing periodically to ensure even melting and to make sure the chocolate doesn’t over-cook. You can also use a double boiler on the stove to avoid obliterating your chocolate, but a microwave is completely sufficient as long as you have either a watchful eye or are an impatient cook (like me!). Stir in ½ and ½, powdered sugar and kahlua, mixing well. Spoon/drizzle over small bundts. Additionally, melt a small amount of white chocolate, and drizzle over the top of the chocolate-kahlua glaze.

Cherry-Almond Danish Braid

This recipe is a staple of mine, making a few appearances at parties recently where it was quickly gobbled up, reminding me how much it should be shared. This recipe is delicious. Easy. Deliciously easy, and easily customizable. This recipe came from a Better Homes and Gardens Off the Shelf Baking cookbook. Why off the shelf? This recipe uses storebought puff pastry dough, as well as almond paste and cherry preserves… makes me feel just a tiny bit guilty posting this when I try to specialize in homemade goodies, but it is so good it must be shared, especially for the options in personalizing it!

Cherry-Almond Danish Pastry Braid
2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 8 oz can almond paste
¼ cup sugar
1 egg, separated (I use the equivalent egg white substitute for the entire recipe)
½ Cup cherry preserves
almond slices for decorating
raw, course sugar, for decorating

Per Puff Pastry Sheet:
Line large baking sheet with parchment paper. Unfold the pastry sheet. Prepare the almond filling by beating almond paste with sugar and egg white with an electric mixer until combined. Spread the almond paste mixture (about half, although I find that half is a little much) on the center panel of the unfolded pastry sheet, staying away from the edges of this panel by approximately half of an inch on all sides. Spoon and spread cherry preserves over the top of the almond filling to your liking (recipe calls for approximately ¼ cup per pastry, but a little more is always a good thing!). Using kitchen shears (so easy with these!), cut strips approximately 1 inch wide towards the center filling in the two outside panels. Starting at one end, fold the cut strips in over the center filling, alternating between sides. Using the egg yolk or more egg substitute, brush over braids. Sprinkle course sugar and sliced almonds over the top. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand for approximately 15 or 20 minutes. Bake in an oven preheated to 375 for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown.
Customizing options:
*Use fresh fruit instead of preserves
*Instead of almond paste, spread lemon curd and top with raspberries or blackberries
*Instead of almond paste, use a cream cheese filling topped with fresh fruit or preserves
*Slice apples and toss with sugar and cinnamon before filling danish

Orange Chocolate Swirl Tiger Cake

First, a few weeks ago marked the perfect occasion to bake – February 14. No, not Valentine’s Day, but Chinese New Year! An occasion for resolutions, reconciliation and wishes of a prosperous year full of luck, wealth and good fortune. And, this day being the start of the year of the Tiger! A good friend and coworker of mine from China also happened to have her Birthday just before Chinese New Year, so I was sold – let’s bake a cake... a tiger cake! For this occasion, I tested out the combination of an orange cake with the classic chocolate described in a past blog entry, swirled together and sealed underneath a layer of fondant with a tangy, sweet orange buttercream frosting. To up the potential tasty-factor of this cake, the orange cake and the butterceram frosting was flavored with oranges picked straight off the tree from my parent’s backyard in Arizona. I was lucky enough for my mom to visit me in Boston at the beginning of February and come bearing the seasonal Arizona gifts of home-grown grapefruit, lemons, and oranges. The cake was made from two 10 inch rounds, combining chocolate swirled with orange cake, using Dorie Greenspan’s ‘Perfect Party Cake’ (Published in her Baking: From My Home to Yours) as inspiration for the orange cake. Although Dorie’s recipe was heavily adapted, I find that her mixing and incorporation instructions are perfect as she described, and the combination of the ingredients as written below plus her technical advice (also written below) produces an amazing, beautiful cake with a fine, fluffy crumb, complete with a sweet, orange scent. One final note: This cake comes together with TWO cake recipes, the orange that follows (as written, one whole recipe), but also a half-recipe of the Decadent chocolate cake described in another blog here. To make this cake, prepare both recipe batters individually, grease and flour two 10 inch baking rounds, and alternate scooping each batter into the round (details to follow). This cake is also so delcious as it is without the swirling with chocolate cake, so it can be made and enjoyed as it is written.

Fragrant Orange Cake
3¼ tsp. orange zest
1½ Cup sugar
2¼ Cup + 1 tblsp cake flour
1 tblsp. Baking powder
½ tsp salt
1¼ Cup Half and Half
4 large egg whites
1 stick butter, unsalted, room temp
¼ Cup orange juice.

Heat the oven to 350. Spray two 10 inch baking rounds with cooking spray and coat with flour.
Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg whites and milk. Combine the sugar and the orange zest in a separate, large bowl and rub together the orange zest and the sugar until the mixture is fragrant. Add the butter to the orange/sugar mixture and beat on medium-high with an electric mixer for 3 minutes, until the mixture is very light and airy (do not worry, you will not OVER beat!). Beat in the orange juice until thoroughly incorporated. Add one third of the flour mixture, and beat well on medium speed. Beat in half of the half and half/egg mixture. Then, beat in half of the remaining flour mixture, and once incorporated, beat in the remainder of the half and half/egg mixture until thoroughly mixed in. Beat in the remainder of the dry ingredients, and once incorporated, beat the entire mixture for an additional 2 minutes to fully aerate the batter. Alternate pouring the orange batter and the chocolate batter into each of the two rounds and swirl around a knife a few times in the batter. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean; approximately 30-40 minutes.

After baking, this cake was sealed with an orange buttercream with oranges straight from the backyard tree, and covered with home made orange fondant.

Orange Buttercream:
½ C shortening
½ C Butter or margarine
1 dash salt
5¼ - 5½ C confectioner’s sugar
3 tsp orange zest
3-4 tblsp orange juice.

Cream butter and shortening and then add orange zest. Add sugar, one cup at a time, beating on medium speed. Add orange juice 1 tblsp at a time and beat on high until blended and a consistency that suits your needs. Once the cake has cooled, fill the bottom layer with buttercream, and put top layer on the cake. Coat the stacked layers with the buttercream and let dry for at least a few hours before coating with fondant. The tiger stripes on the cake were made with chocolate fondant to finish it off.

Happy Birthday, YueYang, and Happy New Year! ☺