Guinness Cake

Today is my wee brother's 22nd birthday, and seeing as a while ago I stumbled across a recipe for a Guinness cake, I thought I'd make one from him.  Anyone who knows my brother will know that Guinness is his drink of choice so this seemed ideal.  After I first found out you could make a Guinness cake, I had a look about online for different recipes and settled on one by Nigella Lawson, which you can find here.

It was one of the easiest cakes I've ever made, because it was a wet batter, so you really just mix it all together in a big pot and then pour it in your cake tin.  Easy!  It also looks nice as you're mixing it all together, here it is with all the ingredients in, just waiting to be beaten:

Guinness cake mix

 

Then you just give it a good beat with your whisk to bring it all together and make sure there's no lumps.  I always beat my cakes a lot so that you can get a lot of air in and keep the cake light and fluffy whilst it bakes.  So here it is, ready to go in the cake tin:  a chocolatey delight!

Nigella's recipe says to put it in a 23" tin, and I only have a 20" tin, so I used that and then poured what was left into a wee smaller tin to bake too, just because I didn't want to waste the mixture!  The extra bit came out burnt because there was less of it and so it didn't need to be baked for as long as the full cake.  But the other one came out fine.  I baked it for just over 55 minutes, though I kept checking it after the 45 minute mark so it wouldn't dry out.

The tin I used was a non-stick spring-base baking tin, and I didn't have enough baking paper to line it all (oops), so I greased it with butter and lined the sides but not the bottom.  This morning I had to kind of pry the base off the bottom of the cake, but it wasn't burnt or anything so it was fine.  Next time I will line it though, I think because it was a wet mixture it made it stick more to the base, and lining it is really a better idea.  However, if you don't have baking paper (or you just can't be arsed) then as long as your pan is non-stick and you grease it well, it'll be OK, just a bit more fiddly at the end.

I left the cake overnight to cool completely, so it didn't fall apart when I took it out the tin, and this morning I whipped up the creamcheese icing.  Here's the finished result:

Guinness cake

I think the idea with this cake is that it looks a bit like a pint of Guinness: with the dark cake, and the creamy white head.  I also drew a wee shamrock in the icing, like they do on a real pint, but it doesn't show up all that well, so I made up a wee sign and stuck it on instead.

Now all we have to do it eat it!

Cookies

For some reason, last week I decided I wanted to make cookies.  I think it was from over-dosing on Friends episodes.  Anyway, I was torn between Oatmeal & Raisin cookies, and Snickerdoodles - which I like just for the name, but which really are like the digestive biscuit of cookie-land: a basic sugar cookie with no particular flavour or extras.

In the end I thought a snazzy name wasn't enough to sway me so I went for the Oatmeal & Raisin.  I checked out a few recipes online and finally went for one I found over on a blog called www.smittenkitchen.com .

This is an American blog so all the measurements were in weird amounts - cups and ounces.  I spent a wee while converting them all to metric and here they are:

120g butter, softened
130g  light brown sugar, packed
1 egg
95g all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
140g rolled oats
135g raisins

Because of the conversion the amounts are a bit random, and harder to measure without a digital scale: 95g, 135g... but I made do and they turned out fine.

So I decided to make a new batch tonight, but I cut the recipe in half to make it easier to mix: last time I had to split the mixture in two as I stirred it all together because there was so much of it.  This time, I got 11 cookies, which seemed like a perfect amount.

The recipe is simple enough: you cream the butter, sugar, and egg, whisk together the flour, salt, cinnamon and baking soda (not baking powder) and then add the two mixtures together and give a good whisk.  Then you add the oatmeal and raisins and stir as much as you can - the oats make it quite hard to mix so it takes some elbow grease and dedication - the last time I literally had a batter explosion in my kitchen, all over my hair and the floor, and everywhere!  Tonight, with the half-sized recipe it wasn't so bad.  It comes together in a very sticky, lumpy batter:

And it's so thick that it hangs off your spoon for about 30 seconds if you hold it over the bowl!

Roll the batter into wee balls and put onto your baking tray/sheet of baking parchment.  Once they're laid out, with a good space between them, you smush them with the bottom of a glass so they're more cookie-less meatball shaped.

Smush!

And then you stick them in the oven at 175C for ten minutes.  Most recipes I found said 10-12 minutes but the last time I wasn't convinced 10 was long enough, so I went for a full 12 and then wished I hadn't.  The cookies were still tasty but not as chewy in the middle as I'd wanted.  So tonight I went for ten minutes on the nose.

Baking in the oven

Your time will vary depending on your own oven, but essentially what you want is for them to be brown on the edges and pale in the middle.  You can also do the prodding test where you push down on one and see if it gives... but make sure it isn't still batter in the centre!

A finished article.

After you take them out the oven, leave them to cool for a bit and then take them off the baking try.  Don't eat them right away, because of the raisins: ten mins in the oven raises the temperature of a raisin to something approaching lava and will burn the mouth off you, as I discovered first time around when I happily popped a stray raisin off the tray and straight into my mouth. BURN!

The last step is to generously offer a cookie to your family or friends... and then hide them.  'Cause they are very tasty and people will scarf your hoard if you leave them lying about.  You have been warned!

Now that I've typed this I think my cookies will have cooled enough so I'm off to enjoy the fruits (and oats) of my labour!

Ta-DAH!

Biscuits, And Other Adventures In Baking.

Glasgow Feminist Network meeting tomorrow (Glasgow Women's Library, 2pm, go! If you can.) and I agreed to make some cakes and biscuits to take.  Any excuse to break out the rolling pin and strapping on my apron!  So, I found a new recipe for easy biscuits, and decided to make 2 or 3 batches.  One of cinnamon flavour, one of ginger, and maybe one of almond, too.  Then I thought I'd make my ole favourite, the big Cherry Bakewell.  I've made that one a few times now and it's always a hit. 

Really looking forward to the meeting, I hope it goes well!  I'm waiting for the first batch (cinnamon) of biscuits to cool out of the oven so I can test one and make sure they're tasty before I start the next ones.  You've got  be so careful with biscuits cause if you leave them in for a minute or two too long they go rock solid.  Soft and chewy is what we're after!  I even bought different coloured icing pens so I can decorate them according to their flavour!

I'll do another wee post later to let you know how they turned out.  Watch this space...