guinness chocolate cake

Here's a recipe to get me back into the swing of things. I love baking. I love frosting cakes. But I've realized I like it on my time and with my ideas. Not baking and decorating for a mismanaged bakery with poor quality ingredients and even less quality people. So, moving on. My wheels are spinning about setting up my own business. I have some ideas, but I'm going to keep them to myself for awhile until I get a better handle on what I want to do. In the meantime, here's a great St. Patrick's Day cake recipe. I followed it to a tee (except I only had two eight inch pans, so one of the cakes is a 9 inch in diameter) hence the little decorated flowers to show off the tier. The white frosting is simply a stick of butter and a cup of confectioner's sugar, a tsp of vanilla and a couple tablespoons of heavy cream to bring it all together. The guinness, or any stout beer will do, gives this cake a lovely rich and roasted taste and helps to accentuate the strong dark chocolate.

Here's the link to the recipe:

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2002/09/chocolate_stout_cake

And here are my photo's 

MMMMM... Guinness!

Four sticks of butter!

The melted butter, guinness and cocoa powder mixed. It might look like it would be sweet and delicious, but there's no sugar added yet. So hold your horses before you start licking the utensils!

Heavy cream for the frosting.

 

Frosting the edges