Chocolate Chili Stout Cake with Chocolate Bourbon Frosting

I'm not much of a baker. And I'm not really a cake person. I think the only cake pan I own is a bundt pan. Forget layer cakes - too much of a pain. But, it was rob's birthday, and he'd hinted about chocolate cake. So I started searching the interwebs. We like spicy chocolate things...and things with alcohol. A chocolate stout cake sounded really good, and I had this Sam Adams Chocolate Cherry Bock that I thought would be delicious. So I took Smitten Kitchen's recipe and added some ancho chili powder and cinnamon to it. I also found this recipe and wanted to make the frosting. I worried that stout + spice + bourbon would be too much...for like, 5 seconds. Yeah, the instincts were good on this one. Definitely a keeper!

Ha - I just realized that I accidentally used half the butter called for in the cake...and it was fine!!

Chocolate Chili Stout Cake
- 1 cup stout (such as Guinness - I used Sam Adams Cherry Chocolate Bock)
- 2 sticks unsalted butter (I realized while typing this I only used one stick, and it was fine! Somebody should make this with 2 sticks and let me know how it is)
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 teaspoon ancho chili powder (this gave it the slightest warm edge. Next time I think I would try at least 1 tsp or maybe more)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 eggs
- 2/3 cup sour cream


Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter or spray a bundt pan well; make sure you get in all of the nooks and crannies. Bring stout and butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, chili powder & cinnamon in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 35 minutes (mine took about 45 minutes). Cool completely in pan and frost with:

Chocolate Bourbon Frosting (I halved the recipe from the website and still had some left over...this is the halved version)
- 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 2 cups dark chocolate chips
- 2 cups confectioner's sugar
- 2-4 tablespoons bourbon (I ended up using the larger amount)
- 2 tablespoons cream or half & half

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter until creamy, about 3 minutes. Add sour cream; beat until light & fluffy. Melt chocolate chips (I used the microwave, took about 2 minutes) & cool slightly. Slowly pour melted chocolate into the mixer, beating until well combined. Add the powdered sugar & mix on low speed; then beat on high until well combined. Add bourbon & cream, a few tablespoons at a time. Scrape bowl to make sure everything is incorporated. Refrigerate until set, about 1 hr (I left mine in for longer and it solidified, cause...it's butter. Luckily I had time to let it sit out before frosting the cake!)

 

Sweet & Spicy Southwestern Salad with Cilantro Dressing

Oh, hi blog!

Yeah, it's been several busy months with a lot of not-so-good eating. And no "forced" veggie consumption, 'cause we don't have the CSA every week. But I made a tasty salad tonight I wanted to remember for future meals...didn't even think to take a picture beforehand. It was kind of southwestern-ish with spicy black beans, sweet potato, corn, tomatoes, mango, green onions, spinach, peppers, avocado and a homemade cilantro dressing.

This made about 2 giant servings with about a cup of dressing. Went a little something like:

Cilantro Dressing:
- Whisk together a small container plain nonfat greek yogurt, a couple tablespoons olive oil, some vinegar & lime juice, salt, pepper and a small bunch of finely chopped cilantro. Thin with water if needed. A recipe I found said to make this in the blender; I didn't want to dirty mine!

Roasted Sweet Potatoes:
- Heat oven to 400. Cube 1 medium-size sweet potato, toss with a bit of olive oil, salt & chili powder (I like Penzey's Chili 9000). Roast on baking sheet until browned & tender, 15-20 mins if you cut it pretty small. Remove to a bowl.

Sauteed Corn:
- If your corn is tasty & fresh, you could also just cut it off the cob raw. Husk 3 ears of corn & slice off kernels. Heat a skillet over high heat, add a few drops of olive oil & some cumin seeds. Add corn & saute for a minute or two. I think I added some chili powder to this, too. Add to bowl with sweet potatoes.

Spicy Black Beans:
- Saute 1 clove minced garlic in a small bit of olive oil. Add 1 can black beans, rinsed & drained. Season with chili powder and add hot sauce to taste (I like plenty of Cholula Chili Lime). Stir a few times & set aside off heat.

Other stuff (add to bowl with sweet potatoes & corn):
- handful cherry tomatoes, halved (from our garden; yay!)
- diced bell pepper
- 3 green onions, chopped
- diced mango (GENIUS - I had Trader Joe's frozen mango chunks. Dice these up, throw 'em in the bowl, they thaw immediately)

Build the salad over a small bed of baby spinach: half of the black beans, half of the veggie mixture, half a cubed avocado. Crush a small handful of tortilla chips over the top and drizzle with dressing.

Sounds a little bit involved but it was SO GOOD and pretty healthy!

Curried Lentils with Sweet Potatoes & Spinach

Very modifiable. Use different spices, different greens, make it more soupy...

This made a giant pot. If you want a smaller pot, use half the package of lentils and decrease quantities slightly.

2 onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
small knob ginger, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
2 tsp each garam masala & curry powder
1 tsp each cumin & coriander
2 Tbl. tomato paste
1 can diced tomatoes
2 large sweet potatoes, cut into small cubes
1 box vegetable or chicken stock
1 bag dried lentils, washed (brown or green)
few handfuls baby spinach leaves
1/2 can coconut milk
small bunch cilantro, chopped
splash lemon/lime juice
hot sauce


- Saute onions until translucent.
- Add garlic, ginger, jalapeno and spices, cook 1 minute. Add tomato paste & cook another minute.
- Add tomatoes, sweet potatoes, stock & lentils. You will likely have to add more water to cover.
- Cover & cook on low about 40 minutes or until lentils are tender. Add water if necessary.
- Stir in spinach until wilted.
- Add coconut milk, cilantro, lime juice & hot sauce. Taste for salt - mine didn't need much.

Serve over brown rice, or as-is, or top with a poached/over-easy egg.

Cheater Soft Pretzel Bites

On the theory that "dough is dough," I thought I would try making soft pretzel bites out of frozen pizza dough that I had hanging around. I've made pretzel bites once before from scratch, and they were delicious. I'm not crafty enough to be good at shaping dough, so the bites are much easier.

I also have amassed a collection of gourmet salts, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to use those. Hence:

Pink sea salt, Hawaiian black lava salt, and smoked applewood salt.

The verdict:

Considering that these cost about $1 to make (I used half a package of frozen pizza dough that cost $1.99), and for minimal effort I can have fresh, hot soft pretzels...I approve. The dough probably wasn't as great-tasting as scratch-made, but...whatever. I also wish I could get that deep dark brown that "real pretzels" have, but I think you have to boil them in lye to get that. Eeek!! Now--could I taste the difference between the salts? Not particularly. But I think the black salt won at least on texture...nicely crunchy.


Cheater Soft Pretzel Bites

Frozen pizza dough, thawed (1/2 of the package I bought made around 50 bites)
3/4 cup baking soda
1 egg
Coarse salt

- Shape the thawed dough into a thin rope. Cut into 1-inch pieces.
- Boil a large pot of water & add baking soda.
- Drop in the dough pieces (in batches); boil for about 30 seconds. With a slotted spoon, remove to parchment-lined sheet pans.
- Preheat oven to 425. Beat egg with 1 Tbl water.
- Brush bites with egg wash & sprinkle with salt.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes, until deep golden brown.

Serve with honey mustard for dipping. Next time I might try a cheese sauce too.

Beef Stew à la Khan

So far this winter, the weather forecasters in the DC metro region have been...over-forecasting. We've had at least two snowstorms predicted that barely amounted to anything. And now we're actually getting winter storms named, which is kind of fun. We've already had "Gandolph" and today, we had the arrival of "Khan!" KHAAAAANNN!

Khan gave us maybe an inch of snow, nothing major. But with the whole day off today I thought I'd make a grocery run before the madness hit, as I had a beef stew craving. So I named this...

Beef Stew à la Khan

- Season 1 package of cubed beef stew meat with salt & pepper, & toss in flour to coat.

- Sear beef in a dutch oven in bacon fat (or oil) until browned; remove to a bowl.

- Add 1 package button mushrooms, halved, to pan (add more oil if necessary). Cook over med-high heat til brown; remove to a separate bowl.

- Chop 1-2 onions roughly & add to pan  (with more oil if necessary). Cook until softened & browned. Add 2 chopped garlic cloves & stir briefly.

- Deglaze pan with 1/2 bottle beer (I used Shock Top IPA); scrape up browned bits with spoon. 

- Add 2 Tbl. tomato paste & cook about a minute.

- Add beef back to pan. Pour in about 1/2 box beef stock/broth. I had a few leftover roasted garlic cloves so I mashed them & added them to pan. Also added 2 bay leaves & some smoked paprika.

- Cover and simmer on low heat about 1 hr.

- Meanwhile, peel 3 carrots, cut in half and then into 1-inch pieces.

- I also remembered I had an acorn squash leftover from one of our last CSA weeks, like...3 months ago!! Still seemed fine, so I peeled & chopped that.

- Add carrots, squash & reserved mushrooms to pot & more beef broth to cover. Simmer for 1 more hour.

- If you want to thicken the stew, stir some beef broth into a tsp or two of flour & add this to the pot.

- Taste & add seasonings. I added splashes of red wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce & hot sauce.

Serve over mashed potatoes (I made mine with cream cheese & scallions) and enjoy...preferably while watching Star Trek II!

Bacon Fried Rice with Brussels Sprouts

This was kind of stupid good.

I've been meaning to make a bolognese sauce for a few days, but keep getting derailed by other things. We had a bunch of leftover rice from Chinese delivery, and I also had some brussels sprouts and bacon to use up, so...voila.

I cut the bacon into ~1 inch pieces, cooked it in a large pan and drained out most of the fat. In the remainder I quickly sauteed 1 chopped onion, a few brussels sprouts (sliced/shredded) and a couple chopped garlic cloves. Then added in the rice, added a few splashes of soy sauce & sesame oil, black pepper & hot sauce. Then scrambled 2 eggs into the middle and mixed the bacon pieces back in.

I'd make fried rice more often - it's so easy and is a great way to use up leftovers - but I can never seem to cook rice to quite the right texture. Leftover Chinese takeout rice is the best!

Gourmet Star Wars Shortbread Cookies

OK, got pretty bad about posting on the blog. Sadly the CSA veggies kind of became more of a burden this year, as I was just too frigging busy to cook a lot of the time. However as I type this, I am enjoying some pasta with kale-arugula pesto, made and frozen from one of our last deliveries.

So the CSA's over; now it's just time for fun stuff. Christmas cookies. I got Star Wars cookie cutters a couple of years ago and at that time, made "regular" sugar cookies and spent quite a lot of time decorating them. They came out pretty cool (see below) but it was a lot of work!

This year I thought I would forgo the icing and made the dough itself in interesting flavors. I also went for shortbread, since...super simple and delicious! I settled on three flavors to match up with 3 characters:

- Dark Chocolate - Habanero Darth Vaders
- Cranberry - Ginger Stormtroopers
- Matcha Green Tea Yodas

There is also a Boba Fett cookie cutter...I probably could have come up with a fourth flavor, but I didn't think I wanted to make THAT many cookies.

For the basic shortbread dough, I used this for each batch:
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 2 cups flour

For the Darth Vaders, I got a bar of Ghiradelli 70% cocoa, melted half of it in the microwave and added it to the creamed butter & sugar before adding the flour. I think I added some vanilla too. I probably could have added even more chocolate or maybe some cocoa...the dough didn't taste quite as dark-chocolately as I'd hoped. Before baking, I sprinkled the cookies with habanero sugar (more on that here). The baked cookies didn't taste particularly spicy at all, just a little bit of warmth that kicked in after a couple bites. I'd been cautious because the creme brulee I'd made with the habanero sugar (cut about 50% with regular sugar) was fairly spicy. So, I think if you'd like really spicy cookies you could add some cayenne/chipotle powder to the dough as well. Since I had the other half of the chocolate bar, I decided to melt that, dipped the "helmets" in it, and sprinkled on more habanero sugar. This did add a little more of the dark chocolate & spicy flavors, but they are still fairly tame (at least to my taste).

For the Stormtroopers, I chopped a good handful each of dried cranberries and crystallized ginger, and also added the zest of a lemon to the dough. These are really tasty, probably my favorite flavor of the bunch. Perhaps you can pretend that the cranberries are wounds from the stormtroopers getting shot. Errr...or not. I guess they never did much besides fall over and emit a bit of smoke from the laser hits.

For the Yodas, I added two tablespoons of Matcha (green tea powder) to the flour before adding that to the butter/sugar mixture. Matcha is a pretty expensive ($18 at Whole Foods for a Republic of Tea canister) finely ground high-quality green tea. It's a fairly intense flavor and supposedly has more antioxidants/health benefits than regular green tea. Y'know, to counter the .66 tablespoon of butter in each cookie. So...lovely color to these, and pretty intense green tea flavor. They are definitely a not-too-sweet (I even sprinkled them with some "sanding sugar" before baking) acquired taste of a cookie, but successful I think! Oh, I also added the zest of one lime to the dough for these, but could barely taste it. Could probably do a couple of limes if you want that flavor to be more pronounced.

The basic shortbread recipe I used said to bake these at 325 for 15-20 minutes. I did that with the first batch and they were not done (I also used "air bake" cookie sheets which take longer, I think). I upped the temp to about 335 and then even 350, but they still took at least 20 minutes to get barely brown.

Oh, and pro tip - if you make the dough the day before like I did, remember that shortbread dough turns back into pretty much solid butter when you chill it. Leave plenty of time for it to sit out at room temp before you roll it, and/or be prepared to use your muscles!

These were fun, tasty and different - and definitely MUCH less work than meticulously painting icing on like I did before:

Happy holidays, and may the force be with you!