Chocolate Stout Cake

As I may have mentioned before, my boyfriend brews in his spare time. (He is out in his brewing shed now working on his mash tun, don't ask!) One advantage of the brewing is the nice beer I 'have' to drink, as a supportive girlfriend. Secondly, the newly kitted out brew shed also keeps him out of my kitchen (well mostly he did spent most of last Sunday brewing a 'mini-mash' in my kitchen while I was trying to bake bread). Thirdly, I get interesting brewing side products to cook with, last Sunday's bread was made with spent grain from brewing.

At the moment we have a polypin of stout in the kitchen. Because it is in a polypin, not bottles, we have to drink it quicker before it goes off. *Sigh* what a hard life it is! I decided to help this task along by using some of the stout in baking, and settled on Delia Smith's Chocolate Beer Cake.

I love Delia, her recipes just always seem to work, you follow her instructions and you get what your expecting. This recipe seemed sure to be a hit, when I had to whisk 2oz on cocoa into 200mls of stout ... hum, sticky chocolate beer :)

Yummy, cake mix ... I could have stopped at this point, but I managed to get some of it into the tin. Leaving enough in the bowl for a decent spoon licking session. 

The finished cake is fantastic. It's moist and full of flavour, and although its quite rich, it doesn't feel heavy after you have eaten a slice ... or two ...

Not a very good picture, as it was early in the morning and dark in the kitchen. 

(I should point out I was cutting cake to take it to work for coffee with a colleague,

not because I was eating it for breakfast!)