Comments on: chocolate stout cake

By: bergamot

bergamot — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:58:22 +0000

Just made this for my husband’s birthday. It’s not the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had, but it’s very moist, has a very nice density and was incredibly easy. And while I like the hint of coffee in the ganache, I’d be tempted to try a cream cheese frosting next time, as I think the sour note would offer a good contrast to the rich chocolate. Or else skip a frosting altogether and just serve with ice cream. I followed the recipe to the letter, but needed to bake it for 45 minutes, as it was still very runny at 35. I used a well buttered silicone bundt pan and it didn’t stick at all. I sprinkled some leftover silver dragee onto the ganache and it was very pretty, though dragee’s apparently a bit controversial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag%C3%A9e I had no idea and might chuck what I have left.

By: Susan

Susan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 19:07:46 +0000

Hi Deb, Thanks for this recipe. Mine’s in the oven, but a lick of the batter says it’s got great flavor. It’ll be perfect for my stout-loving hubby’s birthday. While making it, it was awfully tempting to use the barely-cooled beer/choc mix instead of, say, waiting a half hour for it to really cool … but I realized that it probably would have cooked the eggs you mix it into, and that may be contributing to lack of height in some cases. If they’re already cooked before baking, the eggs can’t help the batter rise. So I threw an ice bath under the beer/choc mix quickly, and my cake is almost to the top of my standard bundt pan. Now I need to go find something pretty like your white-chocolate discs …

By: Ashley

Ashley — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:49:12 +0000

I just wanted to Thank You sincerely, for posting this recipe. It was such a decadent delight and not to mention, absolutely beautiful! I did make a few touches here and there: I added around 1 tbs. of Vanilla Extract and I used Founder’s Breakfast Stout as the brew option. I want to make a recommendation; for the coffee, I used a Chocolate Truffle coffee blend by Folgers (not what I originally wanted, but it really put it over the top for the ganache). I plan on making this again, but adding a quality white chocolate as well with the ganache. Thanks for sharing! As always, love the blog, love the recipes, keep it up! Slainte!

By: Eleanor

Eleanor — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:26:30 +0000

Thank you for this amazing recipe! I made it last night for my friend’s birthday and it was simply the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had. I also made it in a bundt pan and after reading previous comments, I sprayed the pan with a ton of pam and the cake came sliding out perfectly in one piece. I actually blotted the cake with a paper towel before cooling, though, to get rid of some of the pam, and in the end there was no greasiness or residue of any kind.

i also made the cake a little more adult by substituting bailey’s irish cream for the heavy cream in the ganache. it’s a little alcoholic, but quite lovely. sort off an irish car bomb in cake form :)

anyway, i’ve never commented on your site before, but this cake got me so much praise and so many compliments from my friends that I had to write and thank you for sharing your incredible talent and all your suggestions with the internet public.

By: Aimee

Aimee — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:04:57 +0000

I just made the bundt-version of your cake recipe for my mother-in-law’s birthday last night. I’m an old hand at baking layer cakes, but believe it or not this was my first time using a bundt pan. Sadly, it stuck in the pan / came out in pieces. I was pretty bummed and after many efforts (including having let it cool entirely in the pan, banging on the pan to knock it loose, running a knife along edges, and then soaking the pan in hot water (MIL’s suggestion) I eventually had to concede defeat in that department and scrape out the rest of the cake.

I ended up just using the scraped out part to “fill” the bundt hole and tried my best to level off the top of the cake to make it even.

I doubled the ganache recipe so that I’d be able to cover more surface area and poured it over the top of the cake, letting it run down the sides where it wanted to.

I was bummed that it looked so sloppy – until we TASTED it. OH. MY. GOD.

This cake was so moist, so utterly scrumptious and delicious and amazingly good…such a rich cake without being too dense, such strong chocolate and coffee flavor…holy S***. Hands-down one of the best chocolate cakes I’ve had or made, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Folks who don’t normally indulge in seconds dug right in and helped themselves to another piece, and a few asked to take a piece home.

AWESOME recipe, and well worth any issues I had with the bundt pan. It makes me want to keep trying! Thanks for sharing this one!

By: Bonzo

Bonzo — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 04:34:41 +0000

F… me, Ray Bradbury! I was looking for a cake for my little girl’s party, and when I saw that this had coffee and beer in it, I knew that it was just the thing for three year olds! There is no better chocolate cake. I even increased the recipe by 50% (but used 2 1/2 c. sugar instead of 3), baked it in a 9 x 12 square pan, then cut it into the shape of a fish, and made a little classic cream cheese frosting that I piped over the ganache to make scales. The tiny bit of sweet white on the bitter dark was perfect. There was a second, store-bought cake at the party with lots left over, but mine disappeared. There is no better chocolate cake.

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:20:50 +0000

Yep, I sure did. I’m at a loss as to why they didn’t turn out. I scanned the comments and others have made it into cupcakes successfully, so I’m at a loss! I’m going to try them again and only fill them halfway. I usually put just over half in with the hersheys recipe, so maybe that’s the answer.

By: deb

deb — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:14:25 +0000

Often, when baked goods cave, there’s too much leaveaner, not too little. Did you use Dutched cocoa powder?

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:07:25 +0000

I made this recipe as cupcakes over the weekend and it was a disaster. :( I’m not sure why, as I’ve been baking/decorating cakes for several years. Perhaps I filled the cups too full? I usually stand by my Hershey’s perfect chocolate cake recipe, so I filled the cups to the same level as with that recipe. They fell in the middle while simulteanously oozing out the tops to the point where I had to scrape them off my cupcake tin with a knife. I’ve made countless dozens of chocolate cupcakes in the past, and I bake often enough that my stock continually gets turned over so none of my ingredients are old. I noticed that the recipe doesn’t contain baking powder… I wonder if I could get some rise out of them with a teaspoon of bp? Though I had to trash them, the flavor was wonderful and I’m not ready to give up. I don’t have a lot of time for trial and error as I want to make them for a friend’s shower this weekend, so I need to decide whether to make them again and fill the cupcakes with far less batter, or to add the tsp of baking powder. I hope one of those is the answer, as I really want them to turn out!

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 01:13:39 +0000

I made this cake only once. One small change–I added several tablespoons of stout to the ganache to validate the name of the cake. Just a hint of the stout flavor comes through. I am making it again this weekend as a plus for a local Beijing microbrewery sponsored chili cookoff. The owner gave me a pint of his spicy stout to use for the cake. I will try to add just one more tablespoon to the ganache to squeeze a little more stout flavor into the cake. Will let you know of my results (and will take exact measurements this time). Cheers!