Chocolate Stout Cake. Yummy? Yes. Pretty? Finally. Exploding? And how.
I decided to make some cupcakes to test the recipe, and set about assembling the ingredients: Guinness, butter (1 pound!), eggs (4!), sour cream (over 1 cup!), flour, baking soda, sugar (4 cups!). As I mixed and simmered and warmed and creamed, the batter grew and grew and grew. Soon, I had approximately one (1) metric buttload of chocolatey goodness sitting before me and only 24 little cupcake papers to put it in.
I grew cautious. I only filled the cupcake papers halfway and still had about 1/2 the batter to go. I buttered and papered a deep cake pan and put in the rest of the batter. None of my containers were filled more than 2/3rds of the way. A false sense of hope settled my soul as I fit them all into my 350 degree preheated oven. I set the timer for 15 minutes and began to wash up.
After 15 minutes, the dishes were done. The cupcakes were puffing beautifully, although the cake batter was only bubbling in the pan. Nothing done yet, but looking promising.
10 more minutes sent me running back to the oven, convinced I’d find beautiful cupcakes with burned bottoms. The result was actually worse than that. Imagine 24 small volcanoes dripping chocolate lava. Thank God I had put the cupcakes in a muffin tin!
Suddenly the bubbling cake batter became menacing. But it only needed about 10 more minutes of cooking or so said the recipe. I was beginning to suspect that this recipe was a lying fiend who tormented home cooks in the 23rd ring of hell. I set the timer again, put a cookie sheet under the cake pan to catch the possible overflow and occupied myself with knitting baby socks while waiting for my certain doom.
Doom came slowly. At least a half-hour after the time allotted, I finally pulled a cake batter coated pan out of the oven. My last toothpick was coated with wet crumbs, but I couldn’t stand the burned chocolate smell of the batter lining the cookie sheet any longer. I set the cake on a rack and let it cool for ten minutes in the pan before turning it out.
Flat. Three hours of my life and at least twenty dollars in ingredients sat flat and moist on the cake rack cooling. I contemplated the conundrum as I cleaned up the oven. I had a couple of different choices, and finally settled on a cover-up.
This morning, I mixed up a quick frosting from mascarpone cheese, vanilla and confectioner’s sugar. On top of that, I deposited a thin layer of chopped toffee bits (Enstroms - Yum!). All that was left was a beautiful presentation on one of our glass-domed cake plates and the cake became a wonder to behold. Now for the title to enchant customers to buy a piece of cake…..
Exploding Cover-Up Cake. I guess I’ll dedicate this one to the current executive branch.