This chocolate beer cake doesn’t contain nearly enough alcohol to get anyone drunk – even if you never drink beer, abhorring the taste as in my case, or even if you feed the cake in mushed form to your newborn daughter or son. You can eat this cake or foist it off onto others and simply go about your business, not tipsy in the slightest, but feeling well satisfied and pleasantly plump. Yet doesn’t every foodstuff imbued with beer have to be described as ‘boozy’ regardless? And after any given slice of cake isn’t it nice with a snooze?
Once again, I don’t like beer, but find this cake surprisingly tasty, so if you don’t like beer either, perhaps that’s something we’ll share? No doubt the cocoa powder has something to say in the matter. And if you do like beer, what are you waiting for, dive right in! Just look at the picture attached to the head of this message, at the sticky sections of glazing and soft pliable crumb. The chocolate beer cake is calling out to you, saying lick me long time, love my flavour, linger tonguingly in my moisterly crevices. And leave the car keys to one side for the night: addled or otherwise, why not lay down with me when you’re done?
Ingredients (makes 8-12 slices, 1 dl = 0.42 cups)
For the cake
- 4 dl sugar
- 1.5 dl butter
- 3 eggs
- 1 dl milk
- 3.5 dl plain flour
- 1.5 dl cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 dl beer
For the icing
- 5 dl icing sugar
- 2 tbsp beer
Notes on the ingredients
If you’re more or less into the beer flavour, add more or less beer balancing the equation with the milk. Some people like to put sunflower oil into their cake batters rather than butter, and perhaps then yogurt or sour cream instead of milk: I err on the side of butter, but we all have our preferences. The couple of tablespoons of beer in the icing give the cake a fairly mild kick. If you want, substitute the beer for a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and milk to make the cake more chocolatey and the icing dark brown rather than white.
Method
- Preheat the oven to 175 C
- Grease or line with baking paper two 8-inch cake tins
- Melt the butter and allow it to cool
- Pour the melted butter into a bowl with the sugar, stirring until there are no lumps
- Add the eggs one at a time to the sugar and butter mixture, making sure not to beat, whisk, or stir too much
- Pour in the milk and mix gently
- Fold in the flour
- Do the same with the cocoa powder
- Now add your teaspoons of baking powder and salt
- With all of that mixed together nicely, pour in a steady stream as you fold the full allocation of beer
- Put half of the mixture into one of the greased or lined 8-inch cake tins, and take a guess what to do with the other half
- Bake for 30 minutes, or until the top of your two cakes are suitably springy
- Pull the cake tins out of the oven, and allow the two cake layers to cool
- While you’re waiting, why not grab another bowl and whisk together the icing sugar and tablespoons of beer?
- When your cake layers are cooled, spread, pour, or drizzle just less than half of the icing to sandwich them together, saving to rest to ice the top and sides
- Eat over the ensuing minutes, hours, and days, but not weeks or months. The cake will keep for four or five days in the fridge
