Dark craft beer chocolate cupcakes with stout

Dark chocolate cupcakes with stout

Aren't these cute? 

I made these mini cupcakes using exactly half the ingredients of the recipe for dark chocolate birthday cake with stout. The instructions are the same, and you should end up with 36 mini cupcakes. (I used three pans similar to the Wilton 12-cup mini muffin pan.) It should also be enough to make 18 normal-sized cupcakes (three 6-muffin pans).

The dark chocolate ganache was quite rich, so I might try using cream cheese frosting next time.

In other news, I will be at the Island East farmers/craft market on March 3, selling all sorts of craft beer from Hop Leaf. I am planning to test-drive some of my baked goods there, too (this means free samples of food!). If you're in Hong Kong, please come and say hi. :)

Dark chocolate craft beer cake with dark chocolate frosting

Birthday cake

An easy way to make sure that your cake is tender and not too dense - whip the egg whites separately to the egg yolks and fold them in at the end. While the extra step is a bit of a pain, the end results are TOTALLY WORTH IT (and worthy of the capitalized letters!). 

Being a shareholder in a start-up beer distributor means that we have a lot of great craft beer around. While I love to drink beer, I can only drink a glass before getting full. My preference is to cook with it. I find that using beer in cooking imparts a certain fullness of flavor to the food but is still subtle enough not to overpower it. I've made Irish beef stew with Tokyo black porter, salted caramel ice cream with Rogue Hazelnut Nectar brown ale. However, one of the recent standouts has been this decadent, rich dark chocolate cake made with Tokyo black porter, but would likely also work well with any other stout, porter or good dark beer. I plan to make it with Rogue Mocha Porter soon. 

This chocolate cake is extremely rich and dense, with a thick chocolate ganache frosting. A small slice would go very well with coffee (or ice cream). Top with your favorite fruit or candy - or leave plain. While you can splurge and use the best dark chocolate to make this cake, I find that the 100g bars of chocolate such as Lindt works fine. (I like to use the cheaper dark chocolate sold in Ikea food mart - it's half the price of Lindt and has a very good texture and taste. I've also used Green & Black chocolate too for special occasions.) I suppose you could also use baking/unsweetened chocolate too, though I can't guarantee the results. Chocolate is the star of this cake, so you want to use the top quality chocolate you're willing to pay for. 

The full amount for this recipe below makes one round 9-inch layer cake (using two 9-inch round pans), or you can halve the ingredients to make a 9-inch square cake. 

Bon Appétit!

Ingredients

Cake: 

• 3 oz (85g) dark chocolate (preferably min. 60% cacao)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour + 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (200 g flour + 50g cocoa powder)*
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 200g (1 3/4 sticks) butter (room temperature)
• 200g (1 cup) + 3 tablespoons caster/granulated white sugar
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 3/4 cup stout, porter or dark beer such as Rogue Mocha porter or Tokyo Black porter
• 1/2 cup espresso or strong coffee (cooled)

* Cocoa powder is optional. If you don't have it, just make up the difference with the flour. 

 Frosting: 

• 450g (1 lb) dark chocolate (50-60% cacao)
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream (I used UHT whipping cream because it's hard to find fresh cream in Hong Kong)

Method:

Cake:  

1. Preheat oven to 350F or 180C. 
2. Butter and use baking paper line your two round 9-inch cake pans (or one pan if using a half-recipe). Set aside. 
3. Melt the chocolate for the cake in a bain-marie (put a metal bowl on top of a saucepan of barely simmering water), or microwave it. See here for a quick guide to melting chocolate. Set aside. 
4. Whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt). Set aside. 
5. Using a mixer, beat the egg whites and 3 tablespoons sugar until stiff but not dry. In layman's terms, this means that the egg whites look like meringue and stay in the bowl (they don't slosh about or fall when you tip the bowl sideways or upside down). Here's a good Chowhound thread about beating egg whites. Set aside.
6. Wipe clean your beaters and use another bowl for the butter and sugar. Using a mixer, cream (beat together) the butter and sugar until fluffy and pale yellow. Add egg yolks 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in melted chocolate, then the beer and coffee. Add in flour in 2 additions until incorporated. (If you overmix the batter, your cake crumb may be coarse and tough.)
7. Gently fold in your egg whites in 2 to 3 additions to the batter. Don't overmix the batter to avoid dissolving the egg whites - the air in the beaten egg whites helps to lighten the texture of the cake!
8. Scrape the batter into pan, then bake in oven until cake tester comes out dry (about 30 minutes). 
9. Remove from oven and transfer to cooling racks. 

The cake can be made ahead 1 day before frosting and assembly. (Cover and store and room temperature. Or, if you're really busy, make it ahead up to 1 week in advance and freeze the cake layers individually. Defrost it before adding frosting.)

Frosting: 

1. Placed chopped chocolate in a metal bowl.   
2. Heat cream in a saucepan until simmering. 
3. Pour hot cream over the chocolate. 
4. Wait one minute, then whisk together until mixture is smooth.
5. Chill in fridge until thickened and spreadable (2 hours in fridge or 30 minutes in freezer). 

The frosting can also be made ahead separately and stored in the fridge up to 3 days before assembling your cake. 

Assembly:

1. Frost your cake, then top with your favorite toppings (white or other colorful toppings are a good contrast for the dark chocolate). For this winter birthday cake, I used white chocolate bark, white chocolate Maltesers, fresh pomegranate seeds, and diced fresh red pear.
2. For layer cake, you may need to use a serrated knife to level off the top of the cake in order to get flat even layers. 
3. For single-layer sheet cakes, you can stick the entire cake (wrapped/covered in plastic wrap) in the freezer for up to two weeks. I highly doubt it would last that long, though!

The last slice...

Orangettes (candied chocolate orange peel)

I was inspired by Smitten Kitchen's orangettes and decided to try making some of my own:

Peeling the oranges... 

Blanching them in boiling water to get rid of the bitterness. 
Do this 3 times. I added cinnamon and 
fresh ginger to add a little spice. 

Simmer in simple syrup (1:1 sugar-water ratio) for 1 hour.  
I used vanilla sugar but plain white sugar works too. 

Let dry - this can take more than 24 hours 

if you live in a humid climate like I do!

Dip in melted dark chocolate, then let 

dry...and try not to eat them too quickly! :)

Birthday Cake (Nutty carrot cake with dark chocolate and almond decoration)

Mom's birthday falls on Easter weekend this year but I'm going to be in Cebu, Philippines, so we celebrated the weekend before. I started a new job this week and didn't have much prep time (well, actually, I'm just not that artistically endowed), so this Easter-themed birthday cake has that "home-made" touch for sure!

It's a 2-layer carrot cake. The cake layers have carrots, pineapple, almonds, coconut, and golden raisins. I used my standard recipe and added extra nuts, raisins and 1/4 more pureed pineapple. Oh, and I also used grated fresh ginger this time as I ran out of the dried stuff (living in Asia, it's much easier to find fresh ginger than the powder). This resulted in a slightly more dense & moist cake, but luckily not too dense. It's up to your personal preference whether you prefer a drier and finer cake or a more moist, richer cake.

Sandwiched between the two layers is a mix of the lemon cream cheese frosting + raspberry jam. The remaining lemon cream cheese frosting was used to frost the top and sides of the cake.

Miffy in Chocolate Pinwheel land

Miffy likes chocolate pinwheels too

Russian Twix: "Twixels"

Found these today in my local supermarket: Orange and chocolate Twixels all the way from Moscow, Russia.

Twixels are basically small elongated Twix. They look more elegant (could pass as dinner party nibbles) and are less chewy due to their thinness. They tasted basically the same as regular Twix but with less caramel. OK, but not sure I would buy these again as I'm trying to cut down on candies and sweets (I prefer saving my calories and money for higher quality splurges).

Kitto Katsu (Japanese Kit Kats)

Japanese Kit Kats: (top to bottom)

- Blueberry cheesecake
- Wasabi
- Matcha green tea

Not pictured (already eaten!):
- Japanese red apple

In Japan, Kit Kats are given to students before they take exams, as the name Kit Kat is similar to the Japanese for "sure win" - きっと勝つ　"Kitto Katsu".

Thanks Mayumi-san for bringing these from Tokyo!

Bailey's chocolate raspberry torte

This delicious torte was not made by me, but Jon on Valentine's day as part of a 4-course dinner (the other courses were wild mushroom salad, stuffed garlic spinach portobello mushrooms, and baked penne).

The torte was made in a 9-inch baking pan with Cadbury's cocoa powder, topped with fresh raspberries and mint, and then drenched in Bailey's mint Irish Cream. Just the thing to win a girl's heart! ;)



Here is a similar recipe (minus fresh mint leaves) for you to try.

Sift dessert bar

Sift is a popular dessert bar in SoHo, Hong Kong. It only serves desserts and drinks; its specialties are chocolate desserts. Pictured above is the Sift chocolate cake. It has chocolate ganache, chocolate sponge, dark chocolate coating, and crushed French crispy crepes (crêpes dentelles de Bretagne). It was so decadent, but it was so smooth that you savored every lingering taste on your tongue.

This was my second visit to Sift. I first visited about a year ago and was very impressed by the desserts. In particular, the Sift chocolate cake, with its delicious crushed crispy crepes dentelles had me dreaming for days afterwards...

I went back this week with some friends. We sat at the bar this time, where we could see the food being prepared (recommended as it's a fascinating process), but last time we sat outside, which is nice when the weather is cooler. It reminds me of New York.

The only question I would have is why the menu seemed almost exactly the same one year later. It would be good to keep the signature desserts (chocolate cake), but it would be nice to have some other choices beside chocolate and strawberries -- perhaps green tea, chestnuts, lavender, apricot, dates, almonds, pistachios...some more adventurous choices would be appreciated. Chocolate and berries are nice, but to be truly innovative! Sift has not yet shown that much creativity. Good presentation does not equal creativity.



Sift
46 Graham Street, Central, Hong Kong

Chocolate Beads from La Maison de Chocolat (Paris)