Saturday, 9 May 2009

Guinness gingerbread cake

Salva, Kenny and I are having Noel and Helen over for lunch in a bit. We agreed to share out cooking between the three of us - so Kenny is doing a starter, Salva is doing the main (a paella which smells fantastic and is making me so hungry!) and I'm doing the dessert. I've been wanting to try out a recipe I saw for Guinness Gingerbread, so I thought this would be a good opportunity. The recipe is quite American, so I've adapted it slightly...

Guinness Gingerbread Cake

Ingredients
  • 160ml Guinness
  • 240g Plain flour
  • 2 tbsp Cocoa powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
  • (Generous) 2 1/2 tsp ground ginger
  • (Generous) 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • Large dash of ground nutmeg
  • 2 Eggs
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 90g Caster sugar
  • 85g Dark soft brown sugar
  • 115g Honey
  • 180ml (=145g) Light olive oil
Method
  1. Bring the Guinness to a simmer and then remove from the heat.
  2. Whisk the eggs, vanilla extract, sugar (both caster and brown) and honey together in a large mixing bowl.
  3. Whisk the olive oil in to the mixture.
  4. Add the Guinness and the remaining dry ingredients a little at a time, alternating dry ingredients and stout, whisking gently.
  5. Pour into a lined cake tin and bake at 180C/Gas mark 4 for 50-60 minutes. Check with a skewer.
Here's the cake fresh out of the oven:
And removed from the tin:
I was planning to serve this up with Crème Anglaise (a light custard) too:
Crème Anglaise
Ingredients
  • 290ml Milk
  • Few drops of vanilla extract
  • 2 Egg yolks
  • 1 tbsp Caster sugar
Method
  1. Heat the milk and bring slowly to the boil.
  2. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl with the sugar.
  3. Pour the milk onto the egg yolks, stirring steadily. Mix well and return to the pan.
  4. Stir over a low heat until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Do not boil.
  5. Strain into a chilled bowl.
  6. Add the vanilla extract and stir in.
I'm not actually certain I can be bothered to make the custard - we'll see!

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, I know, weird isn't it? The recipe I was cribbing is an American one and used Canola oil, so I needed to substitute some other form of oil. Seeing as the only type I have is the really strong olive oil, I needed to buy some, and the choice was between light olive oil and sunflower oil. I went with light olive oil because it came in smaller bottles. Anyway, it worked - you can't taste the olive at all, so not really a problem.

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