The Horror, The Horror! Heart of Darkness Cake

You can tell I really like Halloween by the fact that I’m posting not one, but two blogs. To be completely honest, I’m not actually doing much else for Halloween this year, because it’s a Wednesday and I have a 9-5 job and a long commute. By the end of the day I look enough like a Zombie that no costume will be required. Baking is the least I could do.

Not everyone is going to be a fan of pumpkin or pumpkin beer or pumpkin flavored everything. Here’s an alternative – cake. It’s got beer in it and is covered in chocolate that also has beer in it. If your don’t like cake either, or chocolate, or beer…I’m sorry, there’s nothing for you here. (No seriously, how did you get here?)

This is one of those occasions that I have what I think is a great idea, but due to my own ineptitude and general apathy it doesn’t turn out to be amazeballs. It was okay, but needs some work. 

I decided to bake a red velvet cake using Murray’s Heart of Darkness Belgian Imperial Stout. I like baking with the higher alcohol, higher flavor type beers as they seem to have a bigger influence on the flavor of the end product. Obviously this cake had to be heart shaped. Usually red velvet cake is covered in delicious cream cheese icing, but this wouldn’t do. This heart needed to be dark, so I decided to find out if I could make a dark chocolate ganache with beer. Turns out you can.

My first hurdle was just finding the heart shaped cake tin, which I’m sure I had seen everywhere until I actually wanted one. I’m sure this wouldn’t be a problem if I was organized, but as usual left it until the day I wanted to bake. It’s okay – I did find one eventually. It was even on sale. Crisis averted with 40% off.

And this also...

[Cake]

1 ¼ cups self raising flour

¾ cup of caster sugar

90g unsalted butter

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 ½ tablespoons of cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon red food colouring

½ cup beer

½  teaspoon white vinegar

[Ganache]

100g dark chocolate (dark as possible - I used 85%)

½ cup of beer

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

...has been one of the dark places of the earth.

[Cake]
Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Grease and flour your heart shaped pan (or one 22cm round pan).

In one bowl, sift together the flour, salt and cocoa powder.

In a seperate bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until combined. 


Add the food colouring to the beer. Now add the beer and flour in batches to the butter mixture and beat on low. So, add a little flour and mix, then add a little beer and mix, then flour, then beer...etc..until it is all combined.

Mix together the vinegar and baking soda, then fold the fizzing mixture through the rest of the batter.

Pour into your pan, and place in the oven for 30 mins, or until it passes the skewer test.

Cool on a rack before covering in ganache.

[Ganache]

In a heat-proof bowl, break up your chocolate into small pieces.

Heat the beer in a small saucepan until it is simmering and allow to reduce slightly. Add the butter and stir until melted and combined. 

Pour hot beer/butter mixture over the chocolate and stir until melted and smooth.

Place in the fridge for a while, until it thickens.

Pour over the cake and smooth. 

(Or just eat straight from the bowl.)

I made the cake to par with a Russian Imperial Stout, but it was a little too sweet. It was a bit dry as well. The ganache, however, is delicious. I want to put it on everything.

Boo! Spooky Pumpkin Ale Scones

Happy Halloween!

Now, before I’m hit with a chorus of ‘WHATAREWEAMERICANOW??’, let me say a couple of things on the subject of Halloween…

1. It is not an American holiday. Sure, the US has embraced it more than most, but we all know this is an old pagan festival right? Okay, maybe not in the form it exists now, but it has links to the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain, when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is thinnest and therefore scary shit happens. Or something.

2. I can show you faded old photos from my childhood of carved pumpkins. Sure, they are good old Queensland Blue pumpkins, not the fancy orange ones you can get now. Some of us have been celebrating this day for a while, and the rest of society is just catching up. It’s not my fault if my upbringing was more awesome than yours.

3. Celebrating Halloween slows the onslaught of Christmas. The shelves that currently contain Halloween stuff would be full of Christmas stuff. Yes, I know there is already Christmas stuff…but there would be more of it.

 4. I like spooky, scary, creepy stuff, so of course I like Halloween.

If you really feel the need to have a whinge, at least make it a good reason. For example, Halloween and it’s origins are seasonally inappropriate here in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s an Autumn festival. Really we should all the dancing around the May pole and burning the Wickerman right about now, and the pumpkin worship should take place in May. Of course, that’s if you want to take your pagan beliefs seriously. Me, I just want an excuse to watch scary movies.

Something that is fairly American is Pumpkin Ale. A couple of years ago we good folk down under had probably not heard of, let alone partaken in, beer made of the pumpkin. Or anything made from pumpkin really, certainly not something sweet like pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin donuts or pumpkin coffee. Americans seem to put pumpkin in everything at this time of year. Including beer. It’s my understanding that pretty much every brewery in the US will put out a pumpkin beer in the Autumn. It’s also my understanding that what is important in a pumpkin beer is not just pumpkin, but the pumpkin spices that are evocative of the flavours used in the pumpkin pie/bread/cake/donut/coffee etc.

In the same way that Australia seems to be catching on to the concept of celebrating Halloween, it seems that some Australian breweries have caught on to the idea of making a seasonal Pumpkin Ale (even though it’s the wrong season). A couple of years ago I tasted my first pumpkin beer at a Halloween party in a now defunct craft beer bar. It was a one-off brew made just for the party, so only available on draft on the night. Last year I heard that a couple of NSW breweries had made pumpkin beers. This year it seems there are a few more – HopDog, Murray’s, Illawarra, and even one by Gage Roads which you can pick up in Woolworths. There will also be bottles of the Moondog Artisan Poser out in a few weeks. The times they are a changing.

Once I knew I could get my hands on bottled pumpkin beers at long last, I knew I wanted to bake with one. Here’s another random childhood factoid about me – my Mum did make pumpkin pie and it was good. I have no idea if it was like the American version, but I loved the use of pumpkin in a sweet pie. I had planned on trying my hand at Pumpkin Ale Bread, but had a change of heart. Maybe it was that faded old photo of the Queensland Blue jack o’lantern that spoke to me. See, I am from Queensland. Not only that, but I’m old enough to remember Sir Jo Bjelke-Petersen and his wife Flo….famous for her pumpkin scones. Anyone else old enough to remember Jo & Flo will understand that they are pretty Halloween appropriate. It was a dark, scary time for the Sunshine State.

The beer used is the Saranac Pumpkin Ale, which is the one American pumpkin beer that has appeared on the shelves of a large national chain of bottle shops . It goes against my preference for using fresher local brews, but seeing as they are the experts when it comes to Pumpkin ale I figured it was the logical choice.

Gather to ye…

2 cups of self raising flour

(+ extra for kneading)

1 tablespoon of caster sugar

½ teaspoon of mixed spice

60g unsalted butter – cubed and softened

2/3 cup of pumpkin puree (pumpkin, boiled or steamed, then pureed.)

½ cup Pumpkin Ale

As the clock strikes midnight…

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Sift your dry ingredients together into a bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour until it resembles fine crumbs. Make a well and add the beer and the pumpkin puree. Mix into the dry ingredients with a spatula or a knife. 

 

When fairly well combined, tip out onto a very well floured surface. Knead until smooth. I found the mix super sticky, so make sure you have plenty of flour on hand to cover the surface, your hands and anything else the dough may touch. Roll out to about 2cm thick. At this point it’s up to you how to cut them. I favour the traditional round scone shape. If you don’t have a round cutter, you could just use a knife and make squares. Or, you could even shape the dough into a circle and cut into wedges.

 Place on a baking tray with baking paper on it, and put them in the oven for 15 – 20 minutes. They should just be starting to brown on top.

You could probably enjoy these with either a sweet topping, such as honey or golden syrup, or make a herbed butter to compliment the pumpkin. Goes down well with the leftover Pumpkin Ale, or tea, coffee, Bonox…pretty much anything.

 

I found the flavor of these a little too subtle. I was hoping for a little more. More pumpkin, or more spice. Just more. They’re a very nice scone without a doubt – not too heavy or dry – just not what I expected. It probably didn’t help that I didn’t taste the beer before using it. I was fairly conservative with the amount of spice added, as I expected a lot to come from the beer. I may up the spice next time.

 

Big Arse Brown Ale Banana Peanut Butter Choc Chip Muffins

As per my last post, today I am celebrating Brown Ale Day. What's a celebration without a bit of cake, right?

I do realise that my last recipe using brown ale also used banana, and was essentially a cake, but when I stumbled upon this recipe for Banana and Peanut Butter Muffins I had to try it...with the added bonus of brown ale. What caught my attention with this recipe is that it uses no eggs. I replaced the milk with beer, so if you also leave out the choc-chips, or use a non-dairy version, these are in fact...vegan!

I haven't baked sans eggs before. To be honest, I didn't really know what part eggs played in the baking process, but after some brief research it seems they bind, add moisture and some leavening. Further research into vegan baking seemed to indicate you can compensate for this with banana and some extra baking powder. Beer also has a bit of a leavening effect, so I decided it was worth a try.

The brown of choice for this was the Prickly Moses Tailpipe. Self described as a 'big ass brown', I'm pretty sure these muffins are going to make my arse bigger.

Never a frown...

(Makes about 12 muffins)

1 cup all-purpose flour

2/3 cup wholemeal flour 

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3 small ripe bananas (or 2 large)
2 heaped teaspoons baking powder 

3/4 cup brown ale 

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter 

3 tablespoons vegetable-based oil (I used a light olive oil)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla 

3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

...with Golden Brown.

Preheat oven to 180C degrees. Grease or line your muffin tin.

In one bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, brown sugar, salt and cinnamon (ie all the dry things). 

In a seperate bowl, mash the bananas, then add the other wet ingredients -  the brown ale, peanut butter, oil, and vanilla - and mix well. 

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine before stirring in the chocolate chips.

Fill the muffin tin cups with mixture, and bake for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown.

 

Despite my trepidation about cooking without eggs, the muffins rose perfectly and are light and fluffy (score one to the vegans). They are also delicious. Seriously - I can't stop eating them and can feel my arse already getting bigger. Obviously they can be enjoyed with a brown ale, or any beer at that dark end of the spectrum.

Get Down With the Brown (Ale Banana Bread)

Is there a better time for banking than a grey, wet Sunday afternoon? Autumn has hit like clockwork. The last weekend of February was spent sitting on a beach with temperatures in the high 30’s. The rain hit almost as soon as the pages of the calendar were flipped over to March 1^st.

Summer is all about barbecuing, cooking outdoors and it’s not conducive to baking. No one wants the oven on when the whole house already feels like an oven. Autumn is perfect to get back into baking mode. When it’s wet and windy out, there is nothing like filling your house with the delicious aroma of something baking to send those change-of-season blues away.

A couple of weeks ago the Brooklyn Brewery tweeted a link to this recipe for Brown Ale Banana Bread. It caught my interest. I’ve made banana bread (and muffins too) with beer before quite a few times. In the past I’ve always used a hefeweizen. With the banana and clove flavours you find in a hef it seems like the perfect beer for banana bread, and it always comes up a treat. This recipe grabbed by interest, however, because I really love brown ales. They have lovely caramel, coffee flavours and I could see how that would work in banana bread.

So, the first weekend of Autumn and the planets all aligned. We just happened to have four over ripe bananas in our fruit bowl, waiting to be baked with. We had also done a bit of a brewery tour the day before, which included Mornington Penninsula Brewery where I managed to get the last bottle of their very good brown ale. Sunday was cool and dreary and absolutely perfect for baking. 

I did make a couple of adjustments to the original recipe, as I didn’t have the exact ingredients and wanted to add a couple of things, but it still turned out to be a fairly delicious loaf of banana bread.

How come you taste so good…

1 3/4 cups wholemeal flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3-4 very ripe bananas
2 eggs
1/3 cup melted butter, margarine or oil
180ml (about half a bottle) Brown Ale
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2cup walnuts

I added half a cup of walnut pieces. I love walnuts in pretty much anything, but especially in banana bread. (Added bonus - they’re good for you too.) I also added half a teaspoon of mixed spice, probably out of habit. We didn’t have any normal sugar, so I used brown – seemed fitting. I also only had wholemeal flour, and no butter, so used margarine. The way I see it, this is practically a health food. 


 …just like a banana bread should.

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celcius. Prepare a loaf tin by lining with baking paper.

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking power and soda, salt, spice, walnuts) together in a large bowl.

I had three medium bananas and one smallish one. So, I mashed the three medium and sliced the small one into 'coins'.

Add the other wet ingredients - eggs, melted margarine, beer - to the mashed banana and mix. Then, add the wet to the dry and fold through until combined. Try not to over mix, but make sure you don't have any hidden pockets of flour.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin, and place the banana 'coins' on top. Bake for 45 - 50 mins. Do the skewer test to make sure it has cooked through. 

 I was pretty surprised at how light and fluffy this turned out, considering I used wholemeal flour and sticky brown sugar. I expected it to be much denser. Its also very moist, but not overly sweet. The flavor of the beer is not strong, there is  a subtle  caramel taste and perhaps some yeastiness. It definitely is more brown in appearance than any other banana bread that I’ve baked.

I haven’t actually had any of this with beer yet. It would probably pair pretty well with more brown ale or a porter. Anything a bit darker with those nice coffee/caramel flavours.

My cupcakes bring all the boys to the yard: Chocolate Stout Cupcakes

I think there may be a few people waiting for this recipe. It is the one I get asked about most often. Maybe it’s the idea of combining two pretty awesome, yet somewhat unlikely things.

Beer and cake is not a natural match to a lot of people. There are plenty of recipes that use beer in cake out there though. Even Nigella makes a Guinness cake! This recipe is a hybrid version of a few that I came across, and it seems to give consistently good results with a number of different stouts. (I did actually try a different recipe to make Guinness cupcakes on St Patrick's Day, and ended up with a batch of fail-cakes. I'll stick to this recipe from now on!)

Maybe you didn’t think that chocolate cupcakes could get any better? Wrong. Beer makes everything better. Well, the right beer will, such as a stout that is dark and thick. The roasted malts used in the brewing process of stouts can often produce beautiful chocolate and/or coffee flavours. Some breweries take it a step further and will add chocolate or coffee to the beer to give those flavours a bit of oomph. Adding stout to a chocolate cupcake gives a beautiful moist texture with a lovely depth of flavour, as well as the slightest bite of bitterness. If you’re feeling decadent, try making them with an Imperial Stout…although you may get lynched by beer lovers who think it’s a waste of good beer.

This Easter we are lucky enough to have a special limited release chocolate stout from Mildura Brewery. Called 'Choc Hops' , we had a preview of this chocolate infused beer at the March microbreweries showcase. It has now been released in bottle form, as well as being available on tap at several good bars over the Easter long weekend. What better beer could there be to make an extra special Easter treat with?

The goodies...

125g unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/4 cup plain yogurt or sour cream

200ml (just over 3/4 cup) good stout – chocolate stout, coffee stout, oatmeal stout, imperial stout…they all work in slightly different but awesome ways.

1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Now hop to it…

First, preheat the oven to 180C degrees and line your cupcake pan with pretty papers. (Note: They must be pretty or the cupcakes won’t taste as good.)

Cream the sugar and softened butter together, until pale. This is easiest done with electric beaters, but you can do it the old school way if you want the exercise.

Add the egg, vanilla and yogurt (or sour cream) and beat to combine. Add the stout, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you mix it in. (The batter may look oddly lumpy and curdled at this point, or maybe that’s just me? Still, it all works out in the end!)

Sift the flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder into a separate bowl and mix well. Add half the dry ingredients to the wet mixture; stir to combine. Don’t use beaters for this part – a wooden spoon is all you need. Add the second half. Stir until smooth, but try not to over mix. (The lumps should disappear into a smooth batter.)

Spoon or pour the batter into the cupcake pan, filling each ¾ full.

Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until the cupcakes spring back when you press the top. (Note: Make sure you lick the bowl clean. The batter is incredibly delicious and should not be wasted.)

…and to top it off…

1 cup icing sugar, sifted
50 g soft butter
2 tablespoons stout
110 g dark chocolate (I use 70%)

Melt the chocolate in a bowl set over hot water, or in a microwave. Set aside.

While the chocolate is cooling slightly, beat the icing sugar and butter together until blended and smooth. Gradually add the stout a little at a time, making sure it is thoroughly mixed in after each addition.

Carefully fold the chocolate into the icing mixture until it has a smooth consistency. Spread or pipe the icing onto cool cupcakes.

These should definitely be enjoyed with more of the same stout, or even a really good porter. Flavoured porters such as Holgate’s chocolate porter, 'Temptress', or the lovely Meantime coffee porter are fantastic matches as well. Basically, any dark style beer with those complimentary chocolate and coffee flavours will work a treat.

Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit: Hot Cross Beery Buns

A while ago I had this fantastic idea - I decided to make my own Hot Cross Buns for Easter. I’ve never made them before, and to make the task even more adventurous I decided to make them using beer. If you can make bread with beer, it follows that you can make other yeasty baked goods, yes? The obvious beer choice for Easter was a White Rabbit Dark Ale. Rabbits…Easter bunny…too perfect, right? What about the White Rabbit White Ale though? Could it be better for my buns? So I decided to make two batches of buns – a traditional fruity bun with the White Ale, and a decadent chocolate chip bun with the Dark Ale. If nothing else, you can’t deny I can be one ambitious lady.

For those who don’t know, the White Rabbit Brewery is located up in the hills of Healesville. A child company of Little Creatures, they brew just the two styles – the Dark and the White – both using an open fermentation technique. The Dark Ale is just that – dark…but not thick like a porter or stout. It’s quite light, which makes it a bit more sessionable, but still with typically dark beer flavours. The White Ale was inspired by old school brews by the Belgians and includes some spice, citrus and honey in the brew. This makes for a very easy drinking, refreshing beverage.

Notably, both White Rabbit beers recieved Top 100 ratings in the recently released "Critic's Choice - Australia's Best Beers" book. The White Ale came in at #90, whilst the Dark Ale was rated as Australia's 7th best beer by a respected collective of beer critics.

Bun #1: Fruity White Rabbit White Ale Buns

The good stuff (enough for six large buns or 12 mini ones):

2 cups plain flour
1 x 7g sachet dried yeast
1/8 cup caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1 tablespoon of grated lemon rind
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup mixed dried fruit
20g butter
150ml white rabbit – white ale
1 egg, lightly beaten

For the crosses:

1/4 cup plain flour
3-4 tablespoons white rabbit

And for the Glaze:

1/4 cup white rabbit
1 tablespoon caster sugar

Getting it together:

In a large bowl (or if you are using a mixer with dough hooks, in your mixer bowl) combine the flour, yeast, sugar, mixed spice, salt and dried fruit. Mix on a low speed, or just give a stir with a wooden spoon. Set aside.

Chop your butter and place in a small saucepan over medium heat. Once it is melted, add the beer and turn the heat off. Stir to combine the butter and beer, and to warm the mixture through.

 
If you are using a mixer, have it on low speed while you add the warm beer mixture and the egg to the dry ingredients. As it comes together, turn the speed up a few notches. You will need to scrape down anything that gets left on the side of the bowl and push it towards the clump of dough on the mixers. Or, if you are doing it by hand, use a flat-bladed knife to mix until dough almost comes together. Finish the mixing off with your clean hands to form a soft dough. (I used my mixer for this batch, and found the dough really sticky. I added an extra quarter cup of flour or so and it became much easier to work with.)

The process is very similar to bread at this point, so apologies if this sounds a bit familiar. Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth. Form into a nice little ball and put into a lightly oiled bowl covered with cling wrap. Put somewhere warm for at least one hour or until dough doubles in size. If you have the time and patience, leave it for two to three hours.

When enough time has passed, prepare your baking tray with non-stick paper. Knock down your dough and turn out onto your floured surface again. Knead again until smooth. Shape into a long sausage, and cut into six pieces of about the same size. Shape each portion into a ball and place onto your tray about one centimetre apart. Cover again with plastic wrap and place back in your warm spot to prove again for another half an hour, or until they double in size.

Preheat oven to 190°C. While you wait for the buns to prove and the oven to heat, make the flour paste. Mix the flour and beer together in a small bowl until smooth. Add more beer if paste is too thick. Spoon the mix into a small piping bag, or if you don’t have one of those, a small plastic snap-lock bag. When the buns have risen enough, snip off the corner of bag and squeeze the flour paste over the tops of your buns to form crosses.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until buns are nicely browned and make a hollow sound when tapped.

When the buns have been in the oven 15 to 20 minutes, make your glaze. Put the beer and sugar into a small saucepan with a low heat. Stir until sugar dissolves. Turn the heat up and bring to the boil. Boil for five minutes to reduce and thicken. Once you take the buns out of the oven, brush the warm glaze over them.

Serve warm with butter, and a glass of beer – more White Ale goes really well with them!

Bun #2: Chocolatey White Rabbit Dark Ale Buns

Mostly the same good stuff, except:

Leave out the lemon rind
Replace the dried fruit with 3/4 cup choc chips
Replace the White Ale with 150ml white rabbit – dark ale

In the paste and the glaze, also replace the White Ale with Dark Ale.

Getting it together and things I learned this time around…

I followed the same process to make these buns as with the White Ale buns, thinking it would be fine. Mostly it is…except that I use the oven on the lowest setting to prove my dough, and this is too hot for the chocolate chips. As soon as I started to knead the proved dough, the chocolate disintegrated (and I got my hands and the bench covered in chocolate – messy!). It became incorporated into the dough in a kind of marbled effect. Not an absolute disaster – they just became "Chocolate Hot Cross Buns" instead of just choc-chip. The chocolate is still in there, just not in chip form.

Looks fine after proving...

...but very different once kneaded. Oops!

What I would do next time is add the chocolate chips after the proving process. Make the dough as normal, without the chocolate in the dry mix. Once you knock the dough down, add the chocolate chips as you knead and work them in. Also, store your chocolate chips in the fridge, so they’re cold when you add them. Once you have the chips in, follow the recipe again and hopefully the chips will stay in chip form.

Good thing they still tasted delicious!

These go well with coffee, or a beer that compliments the chocolate flavours – a porter or stout works well, especially the chocolate flavoured ones. (We were lucky enough to have a bottle of Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel as a special Easter treat…and what a treat it was!)

This turned out to be a learning experience on a couple of levels. I learned from my mistake, but I also learned from my success. I don’t like to toot my own horn, but the White Ale buns were better than any I have bought. This might just be because they were fresh, but they are also light, soft and delicious. So, don’t be afraid to try new things or think that something might be too hard. The worst that might happen is your chocolate chips melt!

 

The end!