I don’t know why but I’ve always liked baking/making something for St. Patrick’s Day for my blog. I’m not Irish, have never been there, but I just like the fact that it is seen as a ‘holiday’ in Ireland and the States.
The color green is usually a predominant factor in a lot of blogger recipes around this time. Or the use of Guinness. And I have gone for the latter, sort of, this year.
My drink of choice for this bake was a porter stout, made by Guinness. It had very chocolaty and coffeeish overtones when I drank it. I immediately wanted to bake it into a cake and add even more of those flavours. The stout adds a rich depth of flavor to the finished cake. I know that Guinness and chocolate cake is nothing new, but the addition of coffee just gave another element to the bake.
The cake batter for this was so light and fluffy I could have just eaten that on its own. I used both melted chocolate and cocoa powder plus a sachet of strong instant coffee. I did restrain myself from eating the batter and baked it in a loaf tin. To decorate I made a simple cream cheese frosting and a slice of the cake looked almost like a pint of the dark stuff with the darkness of the sponge and the white of the frosting.
The taste of the cake itself? So much more than a chocolate cake, with the extra stout and coffee flavours in there. Give it a try for St. Patrick’s Day!
NB: You could use any dark stout in this recipe.
Irish Stout Mocha Loaf Cake
A deep, rich chocolaty cake with irish stout and coffee added
Adapted from Delicious Magazine
Cuisine: dessert Category: cake Yields: 1 large loaf
Prep Time: 25 Mins Cook Time: 40 Mins Total Time: 1 Hr 5 Mins
Ingredients
- 250 grams unsalted butter, softened
- 200 grams dark brown sugar
- 100 grams plain chocolate, at least 60% cocoa solids
- 2 medium free-range eggs
- 200 ml of stout
- 275 grams self-raising flour
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 sachet (7 grams) strong instant coffee powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 30 grams full fat cream cheese
- 150 ml double cream
- 2 tablespoons of icing sugar
- Preheat the oven to 180C and line a large loaf tin with greaseproof paper.
- Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering, or in the microwave. Allow it too cool slightly.
- In a mixer beat together the brown sugar and butter until fluffy, this will take a good few minutes.
- Add the melted chocolate and beat this in followed by the eggs, one at a time.
- In a separate bowl sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb. Add the instant coffee and stir this through.
- Add the flour mix to the wet mix and beat until combined. Add the stout and mix until the batter is smooth.
- Transfer the cake batter to the loaf tin. Fill it about three quarters full, don’t over fill.
- Bake in the oven 35 to 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean from the center of the cake.
- Allow it to cool fully in the tin before removing it.
- Make the frosting by whipping the cream cheese with the double cream and icing sugar until it becomes a spreadable consistency.
- Spread on top of the cooled cake and keep chilled in the fridge until ready to serve.
I am entering this cake into this month’s Alphabakes hosted by Caroline at Caroline Makes and this month Ros at the More Than Occasional Baker. The letter this month is ‘S’ and stout fits in there well!
I am also entering this cake into Dom at Belleau Kitchen’s new challenge ‘Simply Eggcellent’ which challenges us to use free-range eggs. I have used two in here, so I think the cake qualifies!