Skip to main content

Boozy chocolate cakes

Over the last few years I have been involved in testing the idea that you can put virtually anything in a chocolate cake. Prunes, cinnamon, ginger, even mashed potato. (The mashed potato one is really good, actually, but involves about six separate bowls. Definitely a special-occasion recipe.)

Thus far, however, I had never entered the realm of alcoholic chocolate cakes. A recipe in Food & Wine magazine and a half-bottle of leftover wine in the fridge changed all that. I present to you Chocolate-Red Wine Cake, with apologies to my UK readers for the American measures. 1 cup is 8 fluid ounces. Use a measuring jug.

Chocolate-Red Wine Cake2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks (8 oz) unsalted butter
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups dry red wine

Preheat oven to 350F / 180C. Grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan (I used a 9" springform tin with a ring insert).
Beat the butter with the sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and beat until incorporated. Ad vanilla and mix for 2 minutes longer.
Sieve together the flour, cocoa powder, soda and salt. Alternately fold in the dry ingredients and the wine, until just incorporated.
Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake 45 min until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 min, then turn out onto wire rack.
When cool, dust with icing (confectioner's) sugar and serve with whipped cream.

I don't, unfortunately, have a photo, but this is good. It has a decided reddish tinge and winey flavour. Rent a rom-com and invite some girlfriends over.


For a more masculine cake, it's gotta be Guinness. I'd been meaning to try out Nigella's chocolate Guinness cake for a while, and was kicked into action by discovering a chocolate stout pudding recipe on another blog. So, two good reasons to buy some Guinness.

The Nigella recipe is here, and here is the finished product (without icing as Graham isn't a fan of creamy stuff).



It wasn't quite as "resonantly ferrous" as promised by the author, but having finished the remains of the can, I can tell you that the drink tasted somewhat watered down compared to a pint in an Irish bar. If you have a pub round the corner that will pull you half a pint, go there for your raw ingredient. It's a very easy cake to make, although I would mention that where Nigella says "whisk", obey her instructions. I used a wooden spoon, and this is why my cake has small white bits of unmixed flour in.


Happy cake-making!
Labels:

Comments

John Evens said…
Rarely does a half bottle of red wine find itself languishing in our house without soon finding itself being sent down some-one's gullet in liquid form. Plus we were recently informed that any open bottle of below par red wine should be stored in the linen closet to transform to great vinegar. However, if I find myself in possession of canned Guinness I will have no compunction in turning it into cake.
18 November 2009 at 18:29
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Portway: Bramcote Hills to Stanton-by-Dale

I parked in the free car park at Bramcote Hills Park and set off, naturally enough, in the direction of where I'd last been. Up some steps through the woods, along the edge with marvellous views northwards, and down past a school to pick up Moor Lane again. At that point I realised I was supposed to be walking this route in the opposite direction. Oops. Well, it didn't make much difference. It just meant that the Hemlock Stone would come at the end rather than the start. Also, I was doing a figure of eight, so I could switch paths in the middle. That sorted, I pressed on along the disused Nottingham Canal. This had varying amounts of water in it. There were good views back up to the double hump of the Bramcote Hills. Nottingham Canal Also Nottingham Canal Just before I got to Trowell garden centre, I crossed a bridge and walked across a green space to a partly built housing estate. The Boundary Brook had been aggressively re-wiggled. I'm sure it will look better in a year...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Portway: Lenton to the Bramcote Hills

It was cold. My fingers were cold, and my phone was cold too. The OS map was totally failing to find my location, and the more I prodded it the less feeling I had in my fingers, so I gave up, shoved both my phone and my chilly hands into my pockets, and set off. After all, I knew where I was. This was Wollaton Park. And the path was very obvious. Just follow the avenue of trees... ...past the deer... ...and out through the fancy gates. Crossing a busy road brought me into a neat little housing estate with unusual round street signs. This was built when Wollaton Park was sold to Nottingham City Council in 1925. The old gatehouse, Lenton Lodge, is now estranged from the rest of the park, and stands by itself next to Derby Road. The bridge used to go over the Nottingham Canal, which has now been turned back into the River Leen. The unfortunate river got shoved out of the way whenever someone came up with a new building project. This is not its original course. My hands were warming up sli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Advent 2025: Mercy

I'm going to read the whole Bible. The question came up in my homegroup recently (have you ever...?) and even though large parts of the Bible are embedded in my brain, and even though I'm pretty sure I have read all of it at some point, I have never set out to read the whole thing. My friend Dave read through the Bible several times. He was one of the most Christian men I know, in all the best ways, and he died recently. So. This is for Dave, too. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I was going to start on December 1st, and I was going to do the obvious thing and start with Genesis, alongside the Psalms. Then I saw something that mentioned reading Luke in Advent (24 chapters: 24 days) and then I had some spare time today and thought why not? so here I am, a day ahead of myself already. Luke 1 is hardly a voyage into the unknown. In the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent by God,  the Magnificat and the Benedictus ... all woven tightly into the liturgies of the church. But ...
Post a Comment
Read more