Chocolate Irish Beer Cakes

So St. Pat's day has come and gone and if you are like me, you have leftover Guinness in the cupboard.  What do you do with it?  I don't like to drink it usually, and it's too warm for stews.   There is one thing I love to make that uses this stout beer, and it is an all season item!  

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes!  

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes, made back in 2013

For St. Pat's day, the boozy Irish Car bomb cupcakes really hit the spot! But this summer it's really hot and dry and and I wanted a cake that didn't have booze in it, and small enough I could actually eat it all myself.   I had recently purchased four 4" spring form pans, so I made a few modifications to the recipe from Smitten Kitchen and BrownEyedBaker  (http://www.browneyedbaker.com/irish-car-bomb-cupcakes/) to fit my needs:

Chocolate Irish Beer Cake

1 cup stout (such as Guinness)

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)

2 cups all purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

2/3 cup sour cream

Chocolate ganache “frosting”

8-10 oz of Chocolate chunks / chips, semi sweet or bittersweet, or dark chocolate

1 tbsp Honey

2 tbsp Butter

2/3 cup Heavy Cream

Powdered Sugar

Directions 

• Preheat oven to 350°F
• Line the 4” springform pan bottoms with parchment paper.
• Spray the inside to prevent sticking.
• Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat.
• Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth.  Set aside.
• Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend.
• Beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl, about 2 minutes or until blended.
• Slowly add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine.
• Add flour mixture and beat briefly on low speed.
• Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined.
• Fill springform pans to ¾ full.   Any amount leftover, cover and set aside, or use for Cupcakes!
• Place pans on another tray, in case of leakage.   J
• Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, rotating them once front to back if your oven bakes unevenly, about 15-20 minutes.
• Remove from oven, and cool on a rack.
• Once cool, remove from pan, and chill in fridge for 30 minutes while making the chocolate “frosting”.

The “frosting”.

Okay, so this is not really frosting.   I did not want to hollow these out and use the whiskey, so I made a ganache type frosting and covered the cake in melted chocolate.  (are you drooling yet?). 

• Chop up any chocolate chunks and transfer to a heatproof bowl, adding in the chocolate chips.  
• Pour Honey over chocolate.
• Heat the cream until simmering and then pour over the chocolate.
• Let the hot cream melt the chocolate and then add the butter and stir until smooth.
• Add more cream to thin or more chocolate to thicken.   
• Remove the cakes from the refrigerator.
• Place them on a rack and put something underneath to catch any dribbled chocolate (parchment paper works great).
• Pour the chocolate over the cakes, from the center, allowing it to drip down the sides until the entire cake is covered..
• Let the chocolate ‘frosting’ cool and harden.
• **anything that drops below can be scraped up and rewarmed and reused for another ‘layer 

Once cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

 Keep chilled until til to serve.