Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake

When  Janine at Cake of the Week challenged us to make something using beer for her Baking With Spirit blog event, my mind immediately went to Nigella's chocolate Guinness cake. I don't drink beer but always wondered what this cake was like - it's featured in her recipe book Feast, which I have at home. We also had a bake sale coming up at work and I figured that even if I didn't like the cake, there might be beer drinkers in my office who did! But as it turned out, the cake was absolutely delicious, and didn't particularly taste like it contained Guinness - in fact it was one of the nicest chocolate cakes I've ever made!

I think Nigella herself puts it best when she says: "This cake is magnificent in its damp blackness. I can't say that you can absolutely taste the stout in it, but there is certainly a resonant, ferrous tang which I happen to love. The best way of describing it is to say that it's like gingerbread without the spices."

The recipe is available on her website here or in her book Feast.

Measure out the Guinness

Pour into a saucepan, with 250g butter - a whole pack, which seemed like quite a lot! Allow the butter to melt and mix well.

Add 400g caster sugar and 75g cocoa powder. At this point you will have a thick, dark mixture (and you should have turned off the heat by now).

Add 142ml sour cream and mix gently. I realised too late that I was supposed to beat the sour cream with 2 eggs and a dash of vanilla first, then mix it in, but I didn't read the recipe properly. So I added the cream first, then the other ingredients - it seemed to work fine.

Slowly add 275g plain flour and 2.5 tsp bicarb of soda and carefully fold in. This is the first time I've made an entire cake in a saucepan!

Pour into the tin. Nigella's quantities state this is for a 23cm tin, though I don't know how deep hers would be. I have to admit I don't actually know how big any of my cake tins are and I just use the same one for most of my cakes - I ought to get around to measuring it! It must be smaller than 23cm though, as the tin is quite deep and I found I had enough mixture to fill two tins!

Bake for 45 mins at 180C. When the cakes come out of the oven, they are literally black! It made me think they had burned but in fact they were cooked to the perfect consistency, and still nice and soft on top - the black colour comes from the Guinness!

Here's a slightly better picture showing the black colour of the cake

To make the topping, whisk 300g cream cheese with 150g icing sugar

Add 125ml double cream and beat again until it is fairly thick

I also decided that because I had two cakes, I would sandwich them together with a chocolate filling; I used buttercream mixed with a little of the leftover sour cream.

Spread the filling on the bottom cake. I didn't go right to the edge as the cake looked fairly heavy and I didn't want the one on top to make the filling ooze out.

Spoon the topping onto the cake; the idea is that it looks like the froth on top of a pint of Guinness. Which I think it does!

Ta da.... as I said, I was very impressed by this cake and pleased that I have finally found something to do the next time I have leftover beer after a party!

I am sending this to Baking with Spirit as the ingredient this month is beer.

 

I am also sending this to the linkup party This Week's Cravings at Mom's Crazy Cooking

Beer-battered Cod

 

 

Janine at Cake of the Week runs a monthly challenge called Baking with Spirit, that chooses one alcoholic ingredient each month and lets our imaginations run wild. The challenge only started last month and I took part with these pina colada cupcakes, containing September's ingredient of rum (OK, in my case rum flavouring). I wanted to take part in the second challenge this month and was hoping it was an ingredient I would like... or at the very least not something disgusting like creme de menthe! I'm not sure whether I was pleased or disappointed when Janine chose beer! It's cheap and easily available but I don't even drink beer, let alone cook with it!

 

One of the first things that sprang to mind when I thought of beer was beer-battered fish. I happened to have just bought some cod, and I love fish and chips, so I decided to give it a go, even though I've never deep fried anything and was a little bit scared!

 

I checked out a few different recipes on the internet and decided they were all pretty much the same. The beer I used was Guinness, which does have a strong flavour (which I hate in fact) and I thought it would probably have been better to use a lighter beer, but I had half a can of Guinness left over from another recipe... which you will read about soon! I did find recipes for beer-battered fish using Guinness on the internet so I was confident it would work.

 

First I measured out the flour - a cup and a half, though this ended up making way too much, but it was the right quantity for the amount of beer I had left so decided to go with it.

 

 

Pour in half a can of Guinness, add some salt and pepper and mix well to make a batter. Leave to stand for at least 15 minutes.

Coat the fish in flour then dip in the batter. It didn't look particularly appetising at this point and I really didn't know how the sludgy batter would look anything like what you get from the chip shop!

Heat some oil in a pan - a few inches deep. This is the part I was quite nervous about, as I don't have a deep fryer and have never cooked anything in this much oil before!

I carefully slid the fish into the pan and it was fantastic - it bubbled up right away and within a matter of seconds the fish had a gorgeous golden coating. It was actually quite exciting!

I also made some tartare sauce, from a spoonful of mayo, some fat-free Greek yogurt and some capers. I cheated and used chunky chips from Tesco. I have to say that I think the taste of the Guinness did come through in the batter and as I hate Guinness, that wasn't really a good thing. But the batter was light and crisp and I was pleased with the way it turned out. I doubt I would have tried making this if it weren't for the Baking with Spirit challenge, so thanks Janine!

Baby shower cake for my boss

So I promised a while ok (Ok, quite a while ago) that I would show you what I did with this fondant sheep... it found its way onto a baby shower cake for my boss!

My boss and his wife are both American, and actually met while they were working at our company's head office in the US. After they got married, he got a promotion and they came to London. Now, baby showers are a big deal in America - some people set up gift lists as we do here with weddings, and the mother-to-be's friends have a big party and play games like tasting baby food and quizzing the parents-to-be about baby-related facts. So I gather from the internet, anyway - I've never been to a baby shower before! They haven't taken off in the UK at all and while I do think it would be nice to celebrate an impending birth (and be pretty handy to get a whole bunch of things you need for the baby), some friends I've spoken to say they find it really mercenary and would never dream of registering with Toys R Us in the same way that they registered with John Lewis when they got married. But I guess if it's generally accepted and what everyone else is doing...!

Anyway, since the folks in our US head office knew both my boss and his wife, they wanted to throw them a baby shower that they could also be part of, so we set up a fake meeting invite for my boss, invited his wife into the office, and set up a video conference link between the two locations. We decorated the rooms and the US team said they would order a cake - and I volunteered to make one.

And where does the sheep come into play? Well, my company's logo is a kind of sheep - it looks nothing like the one I made out of fondant but I think mine is a much cuter, nursery character-style version. And to be honest, I was going to make a teddy bear but ran out of time and had already made this sheep in the cake decorating class!

I decided to make a simple victoria sponge and followed a Mary Berry recipe that I found on the internet. I also made good use of my new Kitchenaid that I had got only a few weeks before!

Beating the eggs

Adding butter, sugar and flour

Mix it all up - I sometimes find I need to use this protector if there's a lot of flour, otherwise it goes everywhere!

Tasting the batter - chef's perks!

I love the fact that the Kitchenaid bowl has a handle, so it's really easy to hold and scrape out the mixture with a spatula

In the oven waiting to be baked

Now for the tricky part... rolling out the white fondant.

As well as registering at three different places for baby gifts, my boss's wife told me they had also chosen the colours lavender and mint green for their new daughter. I thought that was really nice and a good way of making sure they didn't receive an ocean of pink!

I wanted to make the cake reflect those colours but not make it too bright and gaudy, so I decided to leave the cake itself white, but coloured a small amount of fondant with lavender and a small amount with green. If you're using a gel paste colour, you just need to dot on a few blobs with the end of a cocktail stick, and knead the fondant well until the colour is evenly distributed.

I used the Tappit alphabet set to cut out some letters

I moulded some of the coloured fondant into cubes and stuck a letter on top. It's supposed to look like the alphabet building blocks that children have.

The cake, when it had come out of the oven

I sandwiched the two cakes together with buttercream and spread a thin layer of buttercream over the top and around the sides

Then I covered it with the rolled-out fondant icing. This is pretty neat, for me!

Smoothing down the sides

I wanted something to decorate the sides of the cake so it didn't look too plain. I had some baby-themed cookie cutters, which were quite small, so I used them to cut out shapes of the coloured fondant: a rocking horse, a baby's bottle and a teddy bear.

I used a small amount of water to stick them around the side of the cake

And here's the sheep I made a while back in an edible modelling class. I'd been wondering what to do with him...

I think he looks quite cute sitting on top of the cake!

Finally I added the alphabet blocks, which spell 'baby'

My boss and his wife really liked the cake and I was very pleased it turned out well :-)

 

I'm updating this post to send this celebration cake to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked.  Tea Time Treats was one year old in November so their theme for this month is celebration cakes.. and what better thing to celebrate than a new baby?

Meal planning - week 11

Monday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Leftover pasta bake from Saturday with butternut squash in it (from a Slimming World recipe)
Dinner Cod in a white wine sauce based on this recipe but I will use fat-free Greek yogurt instead of the mascarpone and see if it works!

Did I stick to it?Breakfast: cereal. Morning snack: snackajacks (5 syns). Lunch: Leftover pasta bake, free. Also later had a pasta Mug Shot as an afternoon snack which is free but then realised I'd had pasta twice! Went to gym at lunchtime. Afternoon snack: Weightwatchers yogurt (free). Dinner as above, was very nice - had the cod with veg and no potatoes. Probably about 3 syns for the wine in the sauce. Finished the last glass of wine in the bottle too (7 syns)
Total syns for the day: 15 - really good!

Tuesday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Leftover pasta bake from Saturday with butternut squash in it (from a Slimming World recipe)
Dinner With my boyfriend. I've got an appointment after work and probably won't want to cook afterwards so I'm tempted to say we will get a takeaway, though it's not going to be good for my diet!

Did I stick to it? Breakfast: cereal. Morning snack:packet of Skips (5 syns). Lunch: leftover pasta bake (free). Dinner: saveloy and chips from the chip shop with my boyfriend - my guilty pleasure! Think I have to count 25 syns for the chips and 6 for the saveloy. And after that I had a chocolate doughnut as well! Estimating that at 10 syns - the chips were totally worth it, but I'm not sure the doughnut was.
Total syns for the day: 46, most of that on dinner! It's nice to fall off the wagon sometimes though :-)

Wednesday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch risotto with butternut squash and red onion
Dinner not sure yet - ran out of time so will post this now and come back to it

Did I stick to it? Breakfast: tiny bit of cereal as I'd run out then a cereal bar (Special K- option b choice). Morning: Skips (5 syns). Lunch: didn't have enough butternut squash left from making the pasta bake but I did have some of the pasta bake left, I probably should have thrown it out by now but I didn't have time to prepare anything else so had it for lunch. Afternoon snack: Laughing Cow Light cheese triangles (free). Dinner: fresh pasta - ravioli stuffed with ham and cheese - 5 syns, which is better than I was expecting, and I had it with passata which is free. I didn't really think it through though as I only realised afterwards I've had pasta twice in one day! Won't be having any more pasta for a while!
Total syns for the day: 10. Is that all? That's good!


Thursday
Breakfast ryvita with soft cheese
Lunch Chicken noodle soup - I've used this recipe before and it's great, though I may tweak it slightly as I've made it before without the eggs - it's not as thick but still tastes good. Or I might use the recipe from Slimming World magazine.
Dinner Beer-battered cod, home made, with chunky chips from Tesco. I know, another chip shop style meal.. but I want to make this as the Baking With Spirit challenge this month is beer, and I've always wondered about beer batter and making my own. Bit nervous about the pan of hot oil though!

Did I stick to it? Breakfast ryvita with soft cheese. Lunch: used a different recipe in the end, from a Weightwatchers book, and made chicken mulligatawny soup, which was really nice (and free!). I had a packet of snackajacks afterwards as I needed something crunchy (and I didn't have bread or anything with the soup, though I put little pasta shells in it). - 5 syns. Went to gym at lunchtime. Afternoon snack - fresh pineapple (free), packet of Skips (5 syns). Dinner: this was a really unhealthy one but it was amazing. Had no idea I could batter my own fish! Will do a separate blog post about it soon. No idea how many syns I should count given it was cooked in a lot of oil (albeit not for long) and I had it with chips, and homemade low fat tartare sauce. So I'm going to guess a random 40 syns for that meal and hope I have done enough to still lose weight this week!
Total syns for the day: 50, estimate - dinner was pretty unhealthy but something I really wanted to try.

Friday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Leftover chicken noodle soup
Dinner Hinted very heavily to my boyfriend that he might want to take me out tonight, as I've had a stressful few weeks and I always seem to be the one that makes plans for things to do! So hopefully he will come up with something nice... my guess is a nice country pub near where we live in Surrey as that's more his style than a bar in central London (where we both work).

Did I stick to it? Breakfast: cereal. We had a bake sale at work and I wasn't going to have anything, honest! But I'd made a cake (which I will blog about next week) that I'd never eaten before, so thought I ought to try it, and had the smallest slice I could cut! My boss also makes chocolate cookies that he has brought in for bake sales before, and I've never had one and decided it was about time I should.. so I had one of those as well. (For the record, they were amazing and I might have to ask for the recipe!). So that was probably 20 syns easily, oh dear! For lunch I had my chicken mulligatawny soup which was free.
The evening was a bit of a disaster, but in a nice way. The only place my boyfriend could get a booking for a Friday night was Prezzo - which is nice enough but I'd hoped for somewhere different to a chain pizza restaurant. To be fair he did try several other places first but with no luck! Then we both ended up getting stuck late at work - I was in the office til 7 - so it was lucky the only time he'd been able to get a table for was 8.45! But then we spent 20 minutes circling the town centre looking for somewhere to park in the pouring rain, and couldn't find a single space and in the end decided we had to give up! By this point it was already gone 9pm, I didn't fancy cooking, and we knew if we ordered takeaway it would take the best part of an hour to arrive, so we went to the chip shop! My boyfriend seemed to think he'd failed miserably to take me out on a nice date but I was quite happy snuggling on the sofa back at his house with a plate of chips and the new series of Red Dwarf on TV! But really not good in diet terms as it's the second time I've been to the chip shop in the space of four days, and the third time I've had chips! No idea how many syns for dinner, going to say 25.
Total syns for the day: 45 I think, but on very unhealthy food!

Saturday
Breakfast Planning to have stayed at my boyfriend's so I will either skip breakfast or have a Mullerlight, then maybe grab a ryvita and soft cheese when I get home
Lunch At a birthday party for a relative of my boyfriend's family
Dinner Having my boyfriend over. I want to make a curry and have found a recipe for curried lamb from a cookery book I want to review, though my boyfriend says he doesn't like lamb. Am wondering if I can pass it off as chicken.. if it's spicy enough he won't be able to taste anything else! I'll actually do him a chicken variation on the same curry.

Did I stick to it? Had a cereal bar for breakfast on my way to Slimming World. I had some leftover pasta at around midday as we weren't going to the party til about 1.30, and in the end we didn't really eat anything until 4. It was a very nice buffet, I had some pasta bake (with cheese so a few syns there), some crusty bread, mackarel pate, potato salad, sliced ham and potato tortilla. I reckon there were about 20 syns in all that, plus I had a glass of coke, a glass of wine and a glass of champagne, which is another 20 syns or so. Then I had a bowl of the most amazing tiramisu -there were so many desserts and birthday cake that I couldn't resist, even though I know that was probably another 20 syns. On the plus side, as we ate fairly late in the afternoon, I didn't really want dinner, and my boyfriend and I just had two pieces of toast with Flora spread. The bread was from a small loaf (so the slices were quite small) and it was brown so if I count 5 syns for the cereal bar this morning the bread can be my option b choice, plus another 3 syns for the Flora. I was a bit naughty though - I've just discovered Cadburys has brought out a new chocolate Dairy Milk bar with Oreo pieces - my two favourite things together! (Maybe they can do a peanut butter one next!). So my boyfriend and I shared a bar in the evening - I did let him eat most of it but I probably had 10 syns worth.
Total syns for the day: Don't really want to add it up! OK, here goes.... about 80 I reckon!
Slimming World weigh-in: I was very pleased to find this morning that I'd lost another half a pound, it's not much but after the week I've had I was expecting to have put on! Of course that was before the blow-out I had on Saturday, and I'm in Germany for 4 days next week so I think next week I will end up putting on some weight.

Sunday
Breakfast When my boyfriend stays at my house I never know whether we will be up early and want breakfast, or be up late and skip breakfast and just want lunch, so planning a brunch-style meal is probably the best bet! See below...
Lunch Fry-up, inspired by Henry's Full English from the Fabulous Baker Bros cookbook. Essentially it involves sausages, bacon, fried bread, baked beans and eggs - for my boyfriend. I'll have a slightly healthier variation on that though!
Dinner roast chicken leg, roast potatoes, bread sauce - one of my favourite meals!

Did I stick to it? Did a fry-up for my boyfriend at midday; I had two pieces of crispy bacon with the fat cut off and two Quorn sausages on two pieces of brown bread, spread with Flora. Everything is free apart from the sausages which are 1 syn each and the Flora would be another 1. I also had a glass of juice which is 2.5 syns so in total I had a very filling breakfast for 5.5 syns, and my boyfriend had a big fry-up which would have had at least 4 times that amount but he was happy - and baked beans are one of his five-a-day (I can't stand them!)
Total syns for the day: