Guinness Stout Ginger Cake

While searching for an Irish recipe to make for St Patrick's last year I came across several dessert recipes involving Guinness.  Last February we made a Chocolate Guinness Cake for a dinner party, so it wasn't the first time we had baked using Guinness.  And when I originally found that recipe I stumbled upon a few other recipes that sounded interesting.  This was one of them.  The other recipe that I really wanted to make was one for Chocolate Guinness Goodness - basically a chocolate pudding recipe with Guinness in it and then fresh Guinness-infused whipped cream on top to mimic a pint of actual Guinness.  I don't know if I will actually like the taste of it, but I love the idea.  However we decided to make a Guinness Stout Ginger Cake from Gramercy Tavern tonight.  Having held onto this recipe for an entire year I was pretty excited to finally have the chance to make it.

Like many gingerbreads, this cake is deep and heavily scented with spices, but not very sweet.  Without a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I'm not sure that I would consider this cake to be a dessert.  I originally wanted some Haagen-Dazs Five ginger ice cream, but they didn't have any at the store.  On second thought, that might have been ginger overload so maybe it's a good thing that we had to substitute Tahitian vanilla gelato.  Also according to Alex the spices are almost harsh when you eat the cake by itself.  The vanilla gelato helps to tame them a bit.  The Guinness and oil kept the cake incredibly moist.  They also gave the cake a very fluffy/spongy crumb - almost like devil's food cake, and a wonderful crust on top.  This cake would be the perfect dessert for afternoon tea (or coffee) - or the perfect anytime dessert for people who don't like things too sweet.  I wish I had read the reviews of the recipe online because if I had, I would have known to pour the batter into two 9x5 loaf pans, rather than just one (the recipe called for just one).  Halfway through the baking process I told Alex that I wasn't sure if I liked the burnt/bitter smell of the cake, which we attributed to the molasses.  It turns out that the cake basically erupted and overflowed all over the oven.  And then the excess batter burnt to a crisp, which meant that when we opened the oven the first thing we saw and smelled was cake cinders.  Oops.  Next time if I make this recipe, I am either going to use two 9x5 pans, or a large bundt pan so that we avoid the smell of burnt cake and the subsequent cleanup.  Also, you need to watch the Guinness-molasses mixture while boiling it because it goes from simmering, to boiling over in a heartbeat.  Apparently this recipe is prone to overflowing in all kinds of ways.  Luckily Alex was watching ours so he prevented that mess from crusting itself to our stove top.

Recipe after the jump!

Stout and Cheddar Rarebit with Fried Eggs

Happy St Patrick's Day!  I don't know much of anything about Irish food, except that it involves potatoes, corned beef and cabbage.  And anything involving Guinness has to be Irish, right?  At least that was my thought process when I picked this recipe for dinner.  I briefly considered making short ribs braised in Guinness, but that just seemed so heavy.  So I went to Epicurious and searched recipes using Guinness and this was what I came up with.  Apparently a rarebit (or a Welsh rarebit) is toast topped with a sauce made of beer, mustard and cheese.  Who knew?

Anyway, I'm not sure how I felt about this dish.  Alex really liked this.  I love toast with fried eggs.  I love eggs benedict.  Bread with any sort of runny egg yolk is awesome.  That holds true for this dish.  And I really liked the pickled onions with watercress too.  They gave the dish a nice brightness and acidity.  Like the parsley salad most restaurants serve with bone marrow, they also served to cut through the richness of the dish.  Plus the pickled onions provided some sweetness.  The element that confused me was the sauce.  I'm not sure if I could taste the Guinness in the cheese sauce.  Nor could I really taste that the cheese was actually extra sharp white cheddar cheese.  It was savory and a little earthy.  Also as it started to cool down the sauce started to congeal a little.  I think the dish definitely needed a sauce.  But I have to admit that I like an old-fashioned hollandaise and eggs benedict better. 

Recipe after the jump!

Stout-Braised Short Ribs

These short ribs were the dish I originally intended to make on St. Patrick's Day.  But with everything conspiring against me, I tabled them for this weekend, when I would have more time to prep and braise them until they were fall off the bone tender.  Granted, these short ribs don't feel very seasonally appropriate seeing as it has been gorgeous outside all week, but what can you do?  And as there is really no way to lighten up a dish of braised short ribs without losing everything that makes them luscious and delightful, I didn't even bother trying.  Sometimes you just have to be a gluttonous carnivore, spring weather or no.  That's really all there is to it.  And then you have to remind yourself to eat salads for the next few days to make up for your indulgence, but that's another matter entirely.

I was a little worried that braising the short ribs only in Guinness would make them a little bitter, but went ahead with it anyway.  I considered adding some canned diced tomatoes (and their juice) to give the short ribs some sweetness and a little freshness and acidity, but decided that the whole point of braising the short ribs in stout was to really taste the stout.  I really wanted to pick up some Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout, but as this was originally supposed to be an Irish dish for St. Paddy's, I decided to just stick with Guinness.

The sauce is a little bitter, but not overly so.  While it is a little bitter, you can still taste the heartiness of the beef and the sweetness of the vegetables in every bite of the sauce.  Overall, I feel like this recipe is missing something, but Alex really likes it.  I also thought that the short ribs weren't quite as tender as I would have hoped.  Perhaps our short ribs weren't as fatty as usual, but the silky smooth mouth feel was missing for me.  Instead the meat was a little "toothsome" to use a word from Top Chef.  When I want short ribs I don't want toothsome.  I want the meat to basically dissolve in my mouth.  The meat can't be mushy, but it should be silky and incredibly tender.  And you shouldn't need a knife at all.  These short ribs weren't as tender as I like, but Alex has this thing against ribs of any sort that fall off the bone so these were perfect for him.  We usually see eye-to-eye when it comes to food (although he tends to like things a little saltier and a little spicier than I do), but this time we will have to agree to disagree.

Recipe after the jump!

Chocolate Guinness Cake

While searching for a chocolate cake recipe, I kept stumbling across glowing references to Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness Cake.  I am usually not a fan of chocolate cake, or chocolate ice cream for that matter.  I often find that chocolate cake doesn't taste at all like chocolate and chocolate ice cream just tastes chalky.  And while I recognize that stouts can be quite chocolate-y and pair wonderfully with some desserts, the thought of making a chocolate cake with Guinness in it sounded a little weird.  But since literally EVERYONE online was raving about the cake and it sounded intriguing I figured I had to try it.  I was almost dissuaded because I could only find recipes with measurements in grams and Celsius, but eventually I stumbled across a copy of the recipe that had been converted into cups and Fahrenheit on the Washington Post website.  Perfect!

The batter of this cake is very dark and rich.  It's also a very wet batter.  This is definitely not a box mix chocolate cake or a devil's food cake.  Nigella described the cake as having a "resonant, ferrous tang" (which in my mind translates to an irony taste), which doesn't sound that great to me.  Luckily, I don't taste any iron in the cake.  I also don't taste the Guinness, but I can't decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.  This cake is also a little less moist than I thought it would be, considering how wet the batter was.  Granted, wet batter doesn't always translate into moist cake, but in this instance it really seemed like it would.  But overall, this is a really nice, not too sweet chocolate cake!  Plus the cream cheese icing is delicious - not too sweet, but nice and cream cheesy.

And, this cake really does get better the second day.  I'm not sure how or why that is, but it's true.  It tasted even moister 24 hours after I cooked it than it did 6 hours after.  Go figure.

Recipe after the jump!