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| Sorry for the image quality this time! |
This time we're not talking about beer... only. Once again it was time to try something that has been haunting in my mind for a while. A stout mud cake. Even the idea of the two simple enjoyments of life brought together makes my mouth water.
I took a round in the local Alko (liquor store) for searching a good stout for the cake and I noticed one of my favorite Stouts, Sam Smith's Oatmeal stout (http://www.samuelsmithsbrewery.co.uk/oatmealstout.html). And the thing with this beer is NOT the suitability for the vegans... :) The perfect company here would had been the Imperial Stout from same brewery but unfortunately that one hasn't been found in the local stores for a while.
Simple person as I am I didn't want to make my life harder than it was necessary so I trusted to the good old recipe. I had tried this one ones earlier to surprise my fiancée on her birthday. I could say it was a success. ;) So here is the list for the ingredients you'll be needing:
100 g of butter
2 ½ dl of sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ dl of wheat flour
3 table spoons of cocoa powder
1 tee spoon of vanilla sugar
less than 1 dl of stout
This time (for some odd reason) I wanted to try if I could make the impossible possible. I was going to try to make the mud cake as carbomanic (yes, us too... and no, beer is not counted ;) friendly as possible. This is where it all could go wrong too. Instead of sugar I used this Sötin sweetener (https://www.hyvinvoinnin.fi/tuote/9421/Sotin-sokeriton-sokeri) that is basically Eritryol that has 0 kcal. This together the fact that I used almond flour instead of wheat flour makes it a healthy cake. This also takes one bit off the taste which again is balanced with the presence of the stout. Sweet!
So, what you do is that you melt the butter and let it cool. Meanwhile you can whip the eggs and the sugar. I added the stout to the whipped eggs and sugar and noticed the problem that the beer foams quite a bit. This is not alarming as I learned later. Add the dry ingredients and the melted butter. Pour all this to a cake tin (I used bit over 20 cm of diameter but smaller does the trick as well). warm the oven preferably a bit earlier to 175 degrees C and let it stay in for a 25 minutes. And after this... enjoy!
I used the rest of the beer to be served with the cake. A perfect fit I must say! As mentioned earlier this is a beer that I first met many many years ago. Back then it was a beer that really stopped me thinking that is it really so that a beer can have a even this different, interesting yet smooth and dark taste? The answer was explicit: Yes it can. This can be also noted as a setout to my love for stout.
The beer itself then:
Color (8) is pitch-black with a brownish gloom. The foam is beautiful light brown thick and rich. The foam gives a nice touch to the feel of the beer in mouth.
Aroma (9) has notes of sweetness and spiciness. Both coffee and vanilla can be found as well as some summer flowers.
Taste (18) is fruity, sweet malts in the beginning shifting to a roasted malts on the body. Quite dry and aftertaste includes some bitterness of the citrus. Leaves a taste of syrup to the mouth after some time.
Overall (8) score comes from the awesomely balanced package. The aroma and taste replicate the same notes and the color is just plain beautiful with the foam being the finishing touch.
Total score for the stout is 43/50 if I'm not mistaken.
This is a combination that I suggest for you if you're thinking of a way to surprise the lady in the house. I'd say this fits most of the cases. At least at our house I had less than 1/4 th of the cake to taste and the rest was eaten by the women department in our house. Conclusion: even though this was once again a bit experimental cooking it performed the duties of a huge bunch of flowers. ;)
To be seen in the future... A black hole.
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