Hubby’s birthday cake: chocolate cherry beer cake

I was searching for birthday cake inspiration for my husband’s birthday cake. I don’t always make him a cake, in fact, I rarely do, but we can’t afford to go out for dinner at the moment so I thought it would be nice to make him a birthday tea and as I was going to do that, I may as well make a cake as the pudding.

Riding on the back of the success of the chocolate guinness cake I was inspired to think about beer cakes. And as I had some cherries in the fridge, left over from the cherry cheesecake, I started to look for cherry beer cakes. And I came across one that was a chocolate cherry beer cake. It seemed perfect. And then when I read that you also add walnuts to it, and that it didn’t require many strange American ingredients I couldn’t get hold of, I decided this was the cake to make.

This cake is nice. It’s lovely. But it’s not the chocolate guinness cake. It needs more guinness and more cherry juice I think. And maybe more chocolate. And less icing. But if you hadn’t already eaten the chocolate guinness cake, you would be enraptured with this cake and it makes an excellent birthday cake and is much easier to make, transport and keep than the chocolate guinness cake.

I started by making the cake with the quantities in the recipe, but after I weighed out the flour, it looked like an insane amount an I didn’t want an enormous cake, so I halved it. The result was that the cake isn’t quite as chunky as you may like a cake to be, but if you’re also considering not turning into a heifer, this may be a good thing!

So it’s one of those recipes – successful in and of itself, and very delicious but somehow not quite living up to the high expectations I had based on other recipes.

Here’s the original recipe http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/18172/chocolate-cherry-beer-cake.aspx

I pretty much kept to it, but having now made it, I wonder if I wouldn’t have more beer and cherry juice in it and less buttermilk. Or just leave out the buttermilk all together and replace with a couple of tablespoons of milk.

I had no idea what buttermilk was either, but found out pretty quickly from the internet. And also found out it was easy to make and easy to replicate. Buttermilk is the waste product from making butter, its the milk that remains when you’ve made the butter. And that’s not as complicated as it sounds. Basically, get some double cream, whisk until stiff then keep whisking until it starts to go yellow and break up somewhat. Then turn the whisk down low and keep whisking and you’ll start to see a milk substance appear – that’s the buttermilk. Keep whisking (periodically removing the buttermilk if it’s easier) until no more emerges, then seive through the buttermilk. Retain the butter, rinse under the tap to remove the buttermilk left on it (it will turn it sour quicker) and store in the fridge.

You can also make it (but it will take a bit longer) by half filling a jar with cream and shaking it vigorously until you have butter and buttermilk. I found a whole pot of cream made about 100g butter (which I then used in the icing) and 100ml buttermilk. You can also replicate it by adding 1/2 tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar to 100ml milk.

I’m giving you the quantities I used – but you can either double them for a larger cake (or make two halves and put the icing in between them as well as on top), or instead use 170ml guinness or other beer, 60ml cherry juice or sauce and 2 tbps milk for the liquids and keep the rest of the ingredients the same. This will make it a lot more beery, damper and more cherry flavoured. The downside to this is that cooking it will be trickier and you’ll need to adopt methods similar to the chocolate guinness cake to ensure good cooking but not overcooking.

I didn’t use fresh cherries either – I already had a jar of them and I couldn’t be bothered with removing the seeds. You can use frozen too. I just rinsed the canned cherries to remove the excess sauce, halved and and used the sauce in the jar for the cherry juice in the cake.

The icing need a lot less icing in general and less sugar in it too. I reduced the amount of sugar but still the quantity and the sweetness was insane. I added 2 tbsp lemon juice just to balance out the sweetness somewhat. And I overloaded the cake with icing and still have about half of it left in the fridge (going to make cupcakes with it). So I’ll adjust these quantities for the recipe.

As the recipe also says, you don’t need to use Guinness or a stout – but depending on the beer, you’ll get a different kind of cake. A lager will make it a lot lighter and paler and the guinness much darker and damper.

Chocolate cherry beer cake

Serves about 12 (double quantities if you want a double layer cake)

• 185g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 75g unsalted butter
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 45g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids), melted – I would increase this to 60g if you want it really chocolatey
• 125ml beer (or 160ml if not using the buttermilk)
• 80-100ml buttermilk (or whatever you get out of a pot of cream) or equivalent
• 30ml cherry sauce or juice (or 60ml if not using the buttermilk)
• 125g cherries (tinned, frozen or fresh), stones removed & halved
• 60g chopped walnuts

For the icing

• 60g butter
• 1/2 egg (keep the other half in case you decide the icing needs it or there’s not enough of it)
• 70g dark chocolate (at leat 70% cocoa solids) melted
• 100g icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp milk
• 1-2 tbsp lemon juice (add as needed)

1. Heat the oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease a round cake tin, approximately 23cm in diameter, preferably spring board.
2. Sift the flour, salt and bicarb soda together.
3. In a separate, large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth and pale. Then add the egg and chocolate and mix well.
4. Collect up the beer, cherry juice, buttermilk (if using), and flour and place next to your bowl. Add a spoonful of flour, to the cake mix and mix well until combined. Then add a splash of beer, mixing well again. Then follow with another spoon of flour, and then with cherry juice – alternate between the flour and the liquids until they’re all combined in the mixture.
5. Mix until smooth and then add the cherries and walnuts.
6. Pour the cake mix into the cake tin and bake in the middle of the oven for about 45-60 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean from the middle of the cake.
7. Allow the cake to cool in the tin and then turn out onto a wire rack.
8. To make the icing combine the butter, sugar, melted chocolate, egg and milk until thick and smooth. Taste and add lemon juice if it’s too sweet.
9. Smooth over the top of a completely cooled cake. Add some walnuts to the top if you like (or cherries, or whatever).
10. Serve with a pot of tea, or to the sound of people singing ‘happy birthday’ 🙂

Food glorious (christmas) food

We’ve been eating…lots…but as I say, that’s what Christmas is all about.  This is a medley of photos and food I’ve cooked and eaten over the past few days.  I kept forgetting to take photos, so they’re all a bit random!

My husband and I are in Scotland, renting a cottage with friends, as we couldn’t cope with the idea of another family Christmas where we try to please everyone, and fail, and only end up making ourselves miserable!  After an argument that lasted all of boxing day last year, we decided we wouldn’t be doing the family thing again.  And so far, I have to say a cottage in Scotland is the way forward!  We’ve not been entirely without family, we visited my lovely Scottish relatives.  But a few hours with some relatives you rarely see is not the same as all day with family we see all the time.

Food wise, I have been indebted to the Hairy Bikers and their 12 days of Christmas recipe book for all the delicious food.  Without them I would have been lost and panicking, but with the book, whilst it was lots of work, we produced lots of delicious food, with Christmas dinner being one of the best we’ve ever had.  Although they didn’t have capon roasting directions, but they were easily enough found on the internet.

We decided that there wasn’t enough of us for a turkey (minimum 10lbs!) so we went for a capon instead.  Which is a castrated cockerel.  Apparently it makes them eat more, get fat, and become more juicier than chickens or normal cocks.  And I have to say, this was a delicious capon.  And more or less a perfect size for us.

If you’re interested, it was about 7lbs and I did it for 30 mins on high heat, upside down, covered in foil, then 1.5 hours the right way up, covered on a medium heat, and then 30 mins with the foil off to brown it at the same heat.

I’m not going to reproduce all the recipes, if you’re that interested – buy the book!  But I’ll tease you with a few.  We loved the brussel sprouts especially, which is odd as normally we hate them.  But the key, it seems, is frying them in maple syrup.  The sweet syrup takes away all the bitterness.  And we also added chestnuts and bacon to them which just added to the flavours.

We also loved the stuffings.  They were just great.  We made chestnut and sage and apricot and almond, both out the hairy biker’s book.  I’ve made stuffing from a packet before, but doing it from scratch makes all the difference and really turns the stuffing into something worth eating and blogging about!

I have to say though, I bought fresh chestnuts and my fingers still hurt from peeling them!  If you can get vacuum packed pre-peeled ones, then I would definitely recommend them if you like your fingers!

My friend made the brandy sauce for the pudding and it was extremely tasty…might have something to do with the quantities of cream and brandy she put in it, but hey, its christmas!  And it’s freezing cold so we need our fats and alcohol.

The other thing of note was the christmas spiced vodka.  I wrote about making it in my previous post, but we’ve now drunk it and can definitely say, it is so beautifully warming and delicious (despite being frozen!) that its worth the effort and the wait.  And really 3 days isn’t much of a wait.

Well, the haunch of venison is now marinading in the fridge, for the obligatory 2 days.  We’ll be cooking that in a couple of days.  And looking at the meat, even uncooked, I know it’s going to be beautiful.

Even just thinking about all this food makes me feel happy.  There is something about cooking and eating that can be the best thing in the world.  Yes, I’ll have to put in some serious hours in the gym, but then, that’s what January is for.  That and paying off the credit card!  But as it’s still December I won’t contemplate either for any longer here.

Since Christmas day, we’ve had the obligatory capon and ham pie and capon curry.  And we’re now making soup from the capon bones.  I might even make a ham pasta bake with the remaining ham!  But Christmas is full of traditions, especially food ones, and to break them only makes for unhappiness.

I hope you all had really lovely Christmases full of gorgeous food and lots of wine.  And are now looking forward to 2011 in anticipation of all the great food that is to come.  Here are the recipes for the stuffings and the brussels sprouts.  All out the Hairy Biker’s 12 days of Christmas.

Brussels sprouts with pancetta and chestnuts

Serves about 4-6

500g Brussels sprouts, peeled and halved

1 tbsp oil (we used olive)

125g pancetta or streaky smoked bacon, chopped

125g roasted chestnuts, peeled and halved

1 tbsp maple syrup

salt & pepper

1. Boil the sprouts in a pan with boiling water and salt for about 8-10 minutes or until they look softened.  Drain and set aside.
2. Heat the oil in a pan, add the pancetta and fry until crispy.
3. Add the sprouts, chestnuts and maple syrup to the pan and mix together well.
4. Cook for a minute or two until the syrup caramelises, then add the seasoning, remove from the heat and stick in a warmed serving dish until ready to serve.
5. Eat, and be surprised at the sweetness and lack of bitterness.  You may find you actually like sprouts for the first time ever!

Chestnut and sage stuffing

enough for about 4-6 people

1 tbsp oil

1 medium onion finely chopped

75g roasted chestnuts, peeled and roughly chopped

115g sausagemeat

25g white breadcrumbs

zest of 1 lemon

1 bunch of sage, chopped

salt & pepper

1. Heat the oil in a frying pan, and fry the onion until softened.  Remove from the heat, put in a large-ish bowl until cooled.  It’s important its cold when combining with uncooked sausagemeat.
2. When its cold, add the rest of the ingredients to the onions, stir well so it’s all well mixed.
3. Set aside until it’s needed to stuff a turkey or chicken, or form balls with it and roast in the oven until cooked.
4. Sit down, stuff your face and let the compliments roll in!

Apricot and almond stuffing

serves about 4-6 people

1 tbsp oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed

50g apricots (ready to eat) roughly chopped

50g blanched almonds, toasted and roughly chopped

125g sausagemeat

zest of 1 orange

40g white breadcrumbs

2 tbsp fresh chopped parsley

salt & pepper

1. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onion over a low heat until softened.  Remove from the heat and place in a large-ish bowl until cooled.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients to the onions, when cool, and mix well to combine and set aside until needed.
3. Stuff in turkey or chicken or roll into balls and roast in the oven.
4. Eat in smug satisfaction at your cooking expertise!

And now, after all that cooking and eating, sit down with a glass of spiced vodka and tonic and let others do the washing up!  You deserve it

Preparing for Christmas

This year is the first year I’m cooking christmas day.  Normally we go to either my family’s or my husband’s.   This year we’re done with the family drama and are escaping to a cottage in Scotland with friends.  Which is quite exciting, from a cooking point of view anyway.  I get to make Christmas dinner.  As well as exciting, it’s also terrifying because people have so many memories associated with Christmas, me included, that it’s hard to keep everyone happy and not screw up! But I won’t be on my own, I’m expecting everyone to muck in, and I’ll just do what I’m good at – delegating aka bossing everyone about!

Anyway, partly because Christmas things tend to need to be made in advance and partly because we only go to Scotland on Christmas eve, so there’s not much time to prepare, I’ve been cooking for Christmas.  And it’s been pretty fun, mostly, but I’m exhausted now!  I put on the obligatory Christmas cd that everyone seems to have stashed somewhere.  That started off as quite a novelty but about half way through I’d had enough of it!  There’s only so many Christmas songs any one person can take in one go.  And partly because I’ve done most of my gift shopping online, I’ve not been into many shops to notice the music that usually annoyingly plays all day in shops from about mid-November!

I started with the ham, which I roasted, and then glazed in honey and mustard – thanks to the Hairy Bikers – their Christmas recipe book (12 days of christmas – found on amazon here) has been invaluable already and prevented full blown panic from setting in!  It also helped me with my grocery shopping list, and so I didn’t end up buying all sorts of un-needed things in panic!

Then, whilst that was in the oven, I prepped the apple and mincemeat Jalousie’s (from Delia’s pudding cook book) that I’ve already blogged about here. I’ve made a couple more, one of which I cooked and the other I froze for Scotland.   This time, though I also added in some dried cranberries, because I had some that I thought would be good in here, and I had the orange this time. I also used some lovely fresh mincemeat that was made by my mother-in-law.  She gave me such a lovely big jar of it, that I had some leftover after the Jalousies.

And as it doesn’t have suet in it, it won’t keep, so I then made my first, and probably only, batch of mince pies!  I always thought they were difficult, but really, if you use ready made pastry as I do, and you already have the mince meat, there’s really nothing to it!   I also thought you needed pastry cutters for them, but I just used a jam jar and a glass – making sure one was bigger than the other.  I just used my cupcake/yorkshire pudding tin.   I’m quite proud of them actually, despite not making the pastry or mincemeat!  They taste delicious.  And the reason I use ready made pastry is, it’s a lot lighter than stuff that is homemade.  Often mince pies are quite heavy with pastry and get stuck in your teeth.  These were so light and deliciously flakey without being puff pastry-like.

The mince pies were ready for the oven at the same time the ham needed to come out, so that was perfect timing, and I then studded and glazed the ham before returning it to the oven, and removing the mince pies.  I then set about putting marzipan on the Christmas cakes I made back in October, which were my first ever blog on here – which you can find here, another Delia favourite.  No, I didn’t make the marzipan.  In all honesty, I couldn’t be bothered.  The Hairy Bikers do have a recipe, but it just seemed like a lot of effort, especially as I tend to pick off the icing and marzipan from the cake when I eat it!  It’s more for show, and for others to eat!  I’ll ice it in a couple of days when the marzipan’s dried out.

At this point I was flagging so I sat down with a cup of tea and one of my freshly made mince pies and had a breather.  It was worth it for the mince pie alone!

I had reserved the juice that came out the ham and accidentally cut off some of the fat when removing the rind (having never done it before and not being sure what was rind and what was fat!), so as suggested by the Hairy Bikers, for the stock remains after boiling the ham (which I didn’t do), I chopped up the veges for the stock, threw in some water with the ham juices, rind and fat, added the herbs and spices, and boiled for soup.  At the end I added some peas, and took a couple of slices off the finished ham to add to the soup  – and voila, pea and ham soup!  In the photo it looks yellow in colour, but actually its much greener – more of a greeny yellowy colour.

When the ham came out the oven I threw in the Jalousie, and set about the final bit of prep for today.  I made Christmas spiced vodka.  Well I started it.  I mixed up the fruit, spices and vodka and have stuck it in the fridge to absorb the flavours.  I’ll seive it and bottle it just before we head up to Scotland.  Another lovely Hairy Biker recipe (well I hope it’s lovely – I haven’t tried it yet!).

After this, I was well and truly exhausted, so I dished up some of the soup and ate that for tea.  Just lovely.  So, here are all the recipes, as I made them.  You know where they all originate from, but I think, bar the vodka (and the marzipan, which was shop bought!) I’ve adapted them all!

Mustard and honey glazed ham

Serves about 10 (according to the hairy bikers – I think it could easily serve more, especially as you’ll be eating Turkey too)

1.5-3kg De-boned, rolled piece of gammon (I used smoked because my mother-in-law gave it to me, but if you’re not a fan of salted things, go for unsmoked)

about 20-30 whole cloves

3 tbsp English mustard

3 tbsp runny honey

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees celsius (or a bit higher if it’s not a fan oven).  Wrap the gammon, as it is, in tin foil and place on a baking tray.  Roast in the oven for 20 minutes per 500g.
2. When the gammon has cooked for the right amount of time, remove from the oven and turn up the heat to 200 degrees celsius.   Unwrap but keep the foil under it.  Strain off any juices into a large saucepan if making the soup.  Slide a sharp knife under the rind and remove (without removing the fat).  Stick in the saucepan with the juices.  Score the fat all over in diamond shapes and stick a clove in the centre of each diamond.
3. In a small bowl mix the honey and mustard until smooth and even in consistency and then generously brush over the fat on the ham, and down both sides.   Pinch together the corners of the  foil to form a basket/boat around the ham.  Put the ham back in the oven for 10 minutes.
4. After 10 minutes, remove from the oven, brush again with the remaining glaze and return to the oven, but turn the ham around so the other side is facing the back of the oven, for a further 10-15 minutes, until the ham is golden.   If bits start to burn cover with tin foil.
5. Remove from the oven.  Leave to rest for 15 minutes if serving warm, or leave to cool completely before putting in the fridge if keeping for later.
6. Marvel at your wondrous culinary skills and admire your mother for all her hard work to make Christmas special.

Ham and Pea soup

Serves 4-6 (ish)

Reserved ham juices and rind

2 small onions chopped in half (or one large onion quartered)

2 carrots chopped into short lengths

2 celery sticks chopped into short lengths

4 bay leaves

small handful of black peppercorns

small handful of cloves

700ml – 1 litre boiling water (or chicken/vegetable stock)

150g frozen peas, defrosted

Cooked ham shredded

Tbsp creme fraiche

1. Add the vegetables, herbs and spices to a large saucepan with the rind and ham juices.  Add the boiling water or stock.  Bring to the boil and simmer, covered for about 30 minutes.
2. Add the peas and cook for a further 5 minutes.
3. Once the vegetables are properly cooked, pour into a food processor or use a hand blender to blend the soup.
4. Return to the saucepan, add the ham and the creme fraiche and heat through.  Taste for seasoning (its unlikely you’ll need salt, especially if you’re using smoked gammon, but I did add a chicken stock cube at this point as the base flavour was a bit weak).
5. Serve with warm crusty bread and eat immediately to feel satisfyingly warm and full.

Cheat’s mince pies

makes about 15

500g ready-made shortcrust pastry, warmed to room temperature

350g good quality, ready-made mincemeat

zest of an orange

(some extra sultanas, if you’ve not got quite enough mincemeat)

splash of brandy or rum (to go with the sultanas, or leave out if you have enough mincemeat)

butter for greasing

1 egg white

icing sugar for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.  Grease the cupcake tin with butter.
2. Place the mincemeat, orange zest, sultanas and brandy (if using) in a bowl and mix.
3. Flour your surface and rolling pin and roll out your pastry until its about as thin as a 50pence piece.   Take your pastry cutters, jam jars or glasses (you want 2 sizes, one slightly bigger than the cupcake dents in your tin and one slightly smaller.  Cut out 15 of the larger size.  if you run out of pastry, gather up the bits, re-roll and then cut.
4. Place each of the pastry circles in a cupcake dent.   Place about 1tbsp of the mincemeat mixture in each pastry dent.  You don’t want them too full.
5. Then gather up the pastry, re-roll and cut out 15 of the smaller circles.  Place on top of the pastry and mincemeat in the cupcake tin.   Again, re-roll your pastry if needed.
6. Brush the pastry tops with egg white, make a hole for the steam to escape in each mince pie.
7. Place in the oven for 20 minutes, or until cooked and golden.  Remove from the oven.  Leave to cool slightly before turning onto a wire rack.  If serving hot, dust with icing sugar, or wait til cold if serving cold.
8. Serve with a lovely cup of tea or glass of mulled wine to feel all festive.

Christmas spiced vodka

Makes about 500ml.

300g mixed dried fruit

75g caster sugar

zest of an orange

zest of a lemon

2 cinnamon sticks

6 cloves

2 tsp mixed spice

half a nutmeg, grated

750ml good quality vodka

1. Mix the fruit, zests, sugar and spices in a large bowl.   Add the vodka.  Stir well, then cover tightly with clingfilm and place in the fridge for 3 days.
2. After the 3 days, remove the clingfilm, line a seive with 2 layers of muslin and place over a large jug.  Pour the mixture into the muslin and allow to drip through.
3. Once its collected in the jug, pour into bottles and seal tightly.  Store in the freezer until needed.
4. Serve straight from the freezer in shots.  But do remind everyone its pure vodka or you could have granny passing out in the Turkey!

Photos of the jalousies and the marzipaned cake.

I shall now go and collapse into bed before doing it all again tomorrow!  Next up will be baking – cookies, cakes etc.