Chocolate Stout Cake, and a Birthday!

Last week Lara and I celebrated our 33rd birthday! We took a few days off of work and had an extra long weekend! It was full of relaxation, good food, good company and our course, CAKE!!!

Lara and I couldn’t decide on a birthday cake flavor. We thought about it on and off for weeks, truly, weeks. There are so many good options that it’s hard to decide! The weekend before our birthday we went to Grand Haven for a nice walk, and to have a beer at Oddside Ales. We had been wanting to go there to get a beer and truffle fries and this weekend was the perfect time. At Oddside we tried a stout called Haze'l’s Nuts Stout. This is a BBA imperial stout with coffee and hazelnut. It was delicious and I immediately thought it would make a super fun cake.

Lara had made a chocolate stout cake back in June. Just because! Well, really to kind of celebrate the “end” of COVID. We both finally got back to work and things started to settle down a little so we celebrated with cake! It was the best chocolate cake we had made, so we had both been looking for a reason to make it again. A birthday seemed like the perfect reason!

So combining the hazelnut stout, and this amazing chocolate stout cake was a no brainer! We decided to make the cake with the hazelnut stout, and then frost the cake with an Italian buttercream flavored with reduced hazelnut stout (the original cake recipe called for a ganache frosting which we did the first time and was amazing). To finish, we covered the side in crushed hazelnuts.

It was amazing. Again. This cake is the best chocolate cake. I will make it again and again. I would love to try it with coffee in place of the stout for another fun twist. The original cake calls for you to make a 3 layer cake. Both times we made it we cut the recipe down to 2/3 the original side and made a double layer 8-inch cake. This time around the center of the cake layers sunk a little. Not sure what happened, but it didn’t affect the final outcome in any way.

I loved both the Italian meringue, and the ganache frosting (which we did the first time as I stated above). You can’t go wrong with either!

I got a beautiful blanket from Lara for a present! She thought it was time for an upgrade from the sweatshirt Calvin College blanket I’ve had since the end of high school! I can’t imagine why! ;)

THE INSPIRATION!

When your cake layers sink a little, that just means you get more frosting in between layers! :)

Fun birthday dinner at Donkey Taqueria. It was great! Tacos for Lara, mom and I. An amazing Torta for dad. It had smoked ham, pork carnitas, queso chihuahua, refried pinto beans, and guac. I’d never tried the torta before and thankfully my dad let me have a bite. It was amazing. And huge! The tacos were great too, as always. I also got a Mezcal Margarita with a spicy chile salt rim. So good! Chips and salsa, and house pickled vegetable were the apps of choice.

Our Aunt and Cousin wanted to celebrate our birthday too! They took us out to Wax Poetic Candle Bar where we made our own candles. It was a lot of fun! After candle making we ate a lovely lunch on the river at Ramona’s Table in Rockford. A little window shopping afterwards was the perfect way to celebrate!

More birthday weekend. A walk around Reed’s Lake, followed by a picnic in the park.

Another fun celebration with our great friend Lindsay at our favorite wine bar. Aperitivo.

Another walk/hike at Seidman park.

We finished up the weekend with chores! I may be weird, but it was GREAT! We had a whole list of projects for our COVID quarantine, and we finished the last one off! Cleaned up all the weeds growing in the alley around the garage. It feels so good to have that cleaned up!

Chocolate Stout Cake
From King Arthur Baking Company
Cake

• 2 cups (454g) stout or dark beer, such as Guinness

• 32 tablespoons (454g) unsalted butter, cold

• 1 1/2 cups (128g) Dutch-process cocoa

• 4 cups (482g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

• 4 cups (794 g) sugar

• 1 tablespoon baking powder

• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt*

• 4 large eggs, at room temperature

• 3/4 cup (170g) sour cream, at room temperature

  *If you use salted butter, reduce the salt to 1 teaspoon. Frosting 1 pound bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped 2 cups (454g) heavy cream 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting

• 1 pound bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped

• 2 cups (454g) heavy cream

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour three 8" or two 9" cake pans, and line them with parchment paper circles. Be sure your 9" pans are at least 2" deep.

For the cake: Place the stout and butter in a large, heavy saucepan, and heat until the butter melts. Remove the pan from the heat, and add the cocoa powder. Whisk until the mixture is smooth. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl; set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat together the eggs and sour cream. Add the stout-cocoa mixture, mixing to combine. Add the flour mixture and mix together at slow speed. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl, and mix again for 1 minute.

Divide the batter equally among the prepared pans. Bake the layers for 35 minutes for 8" pans, or 45 to 50 minutes for 9" pans, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the cakes from the oven and cool on a rack for 10 minutes before turning the cakes out of their pans and returning to the rack to finish cooling completely before frosting.

For the frosting: Place the chopped chocolate in a large heatproof bowl. Bring the cream to a simmer in a heavy, medium-sized saucepan. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir until the mixture is completely smooth. Stir in the vanilla. Refrigerate until the icing is spreadable, stirring occasionally, about 2 hours.

To assemble: Trim the top of the cake layers to be level, if necessary (otherwise the layers will crack when they are stacked). Line the edges of a serving plate with parchment or waxed paper to keep it clean, and then place the layer upside down on top. Spread 2/3 cup of the icing over just the top of the layer. Top with another cake layer, top side down, and repeat the process. If you baked three layers, add that one also. Use the remaining frosting to cover the top and sides of the cake. Remove the parchment or waxed paper. Sprinkle with shamrock sugar decorations, if you have them.