When I hear the word
stout, I don't usually think of beer. First, I think of the
University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menominee, Wis. (I went to college in nearby Eau Claire.) Next, I think that
stout describes the shape I have taken on since the beginning of the year. Eventually, I get around to
stout as in the dark beer.
A couple of weeks ago, the King Arthur Flour email newsletter included a link to a blog post and recipe for a
chocolate stout cake. I was intrigued because the cake looked pretty awesome; besides, I'd already bought a six-pack of Guinness for a
chocolate stout Bundt cake. I decided to make the King Arthur cake for St. Patrick's Day.
The process mostly went well; I had only a couple of gripes. First, the cake layers baked with a bit of doming, which meant that I had to level two of them before assembling the cake. (I am thinking that is because I used my thinner cake pans instead of the heavier-duty ones.) Also, if you choose the three-layer option as I did, I think you don't get quite enough ganache to frost the cake. (My instinct tells me that even if you made the cake as two layers, you might want to split and fill them; otherwise, that is going to be two extremely thick layers of cake. In that case, of course, you would definitely need more ganache.)
That said, the cake is great: rich and very moist. (You might expect that, of course, when you get to the second ingredient in the recipe: 1 lb. of butter.) I think that this cake might be good enough to become a St. Patrick's Day tradition.
