stout chocolate cake

I've got a major case of the Tuesdays today. Summer's over compounded by my boy problems. The cure? Chocolate cake.

I don't like chocolate cake.
But I make the best chocolate cake.

My sister loves chocolate cake.

She loves it so much that she made me one on my birthday! From.a.box. Lucky for her, we don't pick sisters. And luckier for her, she's stuck with me! So on her birthday, I made her the best chocolate cake.

This recipe is based loosely on Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guiness recipe (that looks like a Guiness!).

I used an Oatmeal Stout instead of Guiness, because I don't like Guiness because they filter the beer with fish scales (vom.com). I don't like fish in my cake. I don't like fish period.

For the cake, you will need:

1 cup Oatmeal Stout

2 sticks unsalted butter

6 ounces of good semisweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

2/3 sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray your pan. Melt stout, butter and chocolate chips in a saucepan. Drink the rest of the stout so you don't go crazy while waiting for everything to melt. Whisk in cocoa powder. Let cool slightly.

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Beat the eggs and sour cream in another bowl. Beat the cooled beer/butter/chocolate mixture into egg thingy. Slowly add flour mixture and continue the beating! Pour batter into pan and bake for about 30 minutes.

For frosting, you will need:

1 brick of delicious cream cheese

1 1/2 cup powdered sugar

2/3 cup heavy cream, WHIPPED 

Whip heavy cream. I'm talking semi-stiff peaks people. In a separate bowl, beat cream cheese with beaters until smooth. Whip in powdered sugar to cream cheese. (Is it just me or does this cake take a real beating?! hahahaaaaa, yeah ok no.) Fold in whipped cream. Frost cake when cake is cooled because runny frosting is not cute.

This frosting is amazing. Light, cream cheese-y and not too sweet. We had a little extra and couldn't let it go to waste...

THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP. 

Refrigerate cake overnight (or at least a couple of hours). We've eaten this cake fresh, and while it tastes good as far as fresh baked cake goes, it's not as good as the brownie density you get after some intense refrigeration.

For actual birthday celebration, you will need:

As many candles you need to dot your i's.

Is it Wednesday yet?

chocolate birthday cake

Saturday was my other roommate Darien's birthday. he requested a chocolate on chocolate cake (his new 'flava' if ya know what I mean ;)
I immediately looked up some chocolate cake recipes that I've saved for a special occasion and found one! It was a double chocolate cake. But work started up this week and i was exhausted by Friday.
So I bit the bullet and bought a cake mix. (gasp.) I know. It took me a good 20 minutes to make peace with it.

But boy, was I glad I did! I bought the Trader Joe's chocolate cake mix and it was amaze-balls. It almost tasted like dark chocolate cake. The cake was very moist but still had a cake-y crumb with a deep, dark chocolate-y flavor. It was super easy (I mean, most box mixes are) and it didn't taste like a box mix. I highly recommend it!

Also, I used Betty Crocker's Chocolate frosting. It was delicious. I know, I'm such a sell-out. But at least I'm human!!! The cake was Darien-approved and at the end of the day, that's really all that matters.

(twenty-six & too many tricks.)

*Things I did right and wrong...
I followed the instructions on the box and used sunflower oil. I decorated with a simple buttercream (butter, powdered sugar, splash of soy milk), but my patience got the best of me and the cold butter did not enjoy the company of my food coloring. A friend commented that it looked like I decorated the cake with strips of ground meat. THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE TO USE ROOM TEMPERATURE BUTTER. Learn from my mistakes people. Eat, enjoy and wash down with a mimosa or two... especially when entering your late 20s.

ps- two back-to-back cake posts... what does that say about me?! At least it's not a cake a day...

carrot cake

i hate carrot cake.
maybe it's because I used to hate carrots. but now I love them (esp with peanut butter!!!!!)
but alas, my sister loves it. and it was her birthday (well last month it was!). and the birthday girl should always gets what she wants (even though she bought me a carrot cake on my birthday... i guess we weren't all meant to bake, but that's a different story).
So on July 30th, I made her a carrot cake from scratch. Like "hand-grated 3 cups worth of carrots"-scratch. And my arm was sore for a straight week! But ya'll, that's the secret. If you don't grate the carrots by hand, you don't get the finely grated carrot that melts into the batter with the nuts and the (golden) raisins, instead, you get those coarse cuts of carrots that stay stiff in the batter and do the opposite of melting in your mouth. and the last thing that I want to taste in my cake is a piece of raw carrot. Which is why this carrot cake worked for my taste buds. Maple cream cheese frosting didn't hurt either!

Recipe loosely based on this smitten kitchen recipe. And when I say loosely, I mean I made a rectangle cake and not cupcakes. :)

I forget if my pan took longer or shorter to cook but I used the trusty toothpick test and checked the cake incessantly after the 15-minute mark!

Lady Gaga Cake

This inspires me to take professional cake decorating lessons!

*photo and cake from cake hero