Vegan Chocolate Stout Cake
Oops.
St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Britain and was captured as a slave by Irish raiders when he was about 16 years old. He toiled as a herdsman for 6 years and eventually escaped back to his family in Britain. After joining the Church, he returned to Ireland as a bishop where he lived and worked in the mid to late 5th century. Legend credits St. Patrick with banishing the snakes from Ireland, but scientific evidence (read: Wikipedia) reports that Ireland never had snakes. Possibly the snakes refer to the serpent symbol of the Druids of that time. In writings credited to St. Patrick, he describes his time as a foreigner in Ireland as not easy. His refusal to accept gifts from kings made him an outsider in the normal order of things and he was at times beaten, robbed and put in chains.
St. Patrick has been revered as the patron saint of Ireland since about the 8th century. I scoured the internet for any mention of St. Patrick as being especially forgiving, but I couldn't find anything that specifically states that he was. I imagine as a saint up in heaven, he would have to be quite forgiving of all the green-beer-induced debauchery and transgressions known to happen on his feast day.
That's good because I totally screwed up. See below.
(What would have been) perfect for St. Patrick's Day: Chocolate Stout Cake. If you don't want to drink your Guinness*, go ahead and bake something delicious with it! Just don't screw it up like I did. I've made this cake a couple times and had great results. But this time, when I had my camera handy, I was stupidly impatient and didn't wait until the cake was fully cooled before I flipped it out of the bundt pan.
It started out great, and even tasted great as I sampled forkfulls of cake from the bottom of the pan. As you can see from the top photo, it just didn't look great. Looking beautiful is of huge importance in my world and I almost didn't share this recipe with you folks because of it.
But thankfully, this cake has an incredibly marvelous component that allows the baker to fudge a less-than-perfect execution (somewhat).
A glaze.
This cake is deep, dark and decadent. It is supremely moist and the stout really adds a richness to the flavor. I made this cake, with prettier results, for my Dad's birthday back in February. I think it is a perfect dessert to make for dudes; the beer makes it sound so tough. This cake is delicious on its own, not too sweet, but I think the glaze adds just the right amount of luscious indulgence to make it not just a chocolate cake, but 'A CHOCOLATE CAKE'.
Plus, the glaze helps to cover up an impatient mistake.
Vegan Chocolate Stout Cake
adapted from this recipe
1 cup stout
1 cup canola oil
3/4 cup dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1.5 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 replaced eggs (I use Ener-G egg replacer)
2/3 cup silken tofu (about 2/3 of a 12.3 oz package).
1 tbsp lemon juice
6 oz semi sweet chocolate chips
6 tbsp soy milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Oil and flour a bundt pan (don't skip this step or the cake will stick to the pan and your results will be even more disastrous than mine).
Bring stout and oil to a simmer in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until smooth. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Blend the tofu and lemon juice together in a blender of food processor. Add the egg replacer powder and water and blend again. Add tofu mixture to the stout-chocolate mixture pan and beat just to combine. Add the chocolate mixture to the flour mixture and fold batter until completely combined. Pour into the prepared bundt pan and bake for about 45 minutes until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a rack and let cool completely in the pan.
When cool, turn out the cake onto a cake stand or plate. It should come out relatively easily. Heat chocolate chips and soy milk in a double boiler stirring until smooth. Spoon or pour the glaze over the cake and serve.
The glaze does cover up some mistakes, but if you practice patience, a virtue St. Patrick would no doubt approve of, your cake will look absolutely gorgeous, I promise.
*Strict vegans should note that Guinness technically isn't vegan due to the use of isinglass - from fish bladder - in the filtration process. Appetizing, huh? Check Barnivore.com for more info. Anyway, I used Pike Brewery's XXXXX stout which does not use isinglass and is more vegan friendly as far as I can tell.
Comments