Food Friday: St. Patrick’s Day

Our family loves chocolate desserts. Birthdays call out for Boston cream pie. Christmas requires a flourless chocolate cake. Road trip? We need to bake a couple of batches of chocolate chip cookies. Naturally. As one does. New neighbors? Brownies. Having a hard day? Here is a plate or Oreos and a glass of milk.

Last weekend Mr. Sanders was looking for a rainy day project, so he flipped through Dorie Greenspan’s Dorie’s Cookies book and found the most involved, multi-step, chill-overnight kind of cookie to bake, and it kept him occupied for two whole days. And yes, they are very very delicious: chocolate-y and crunchy. They contain oatmeal, so they are practically health food. Dorie Greenspan’s Chocolate Oatmeal Biscoff Cookies (He made an ice cream sandwich with 2 of the cookies – I can’t begin to imagine how divine that tasted!)

While other families are preparing corned beef and cabbage (which I think stinks to high heaven) for St. Patrick’s Day, we will be digging through our cookbooks for another chocolate stout cake recipe. We will honor the blessed saint, the foe of snakes, in our own sweet way: with chocolate stout cupcakes.

I love a good cupcake – perfectly proportioned with a maximum icing to cake ratio. Food52’s Chocolate Stout Cupcakes

If you’d rather have cake, be my guest. Please, just save us a couple of slices.
Chocolate Stout Cake

Cake
• 2 cups stout (such as Guinness)
• 2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
• 4 cups all purpose flour
• 4 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/3 cups sour cream

Icing
• 2 cups whipping cream
• 1 pound bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped

For cake:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter three 8-inch round cake pans with 2-inch-high sides. Line with parchment paper. Butter paper. Bring 2 cups stout and 2 cups 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, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 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. Divide batter equally among prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Transfer cakes to rack; cool 10 minutes. Turn cakes out onto rack and cool completely.

For icing:
Bring cream to simmer in heavy medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Add chopped chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Refrigerate until icing is spreadable, stirring frequently, about 2 hours. 
Place 1 cake layer on plate. Spread 2/3 cup icing over. Top with second cake layer. Spread 2/3 cup icing over. Top with third cake layer. Spread remaining icing over top and sides of cake.

Here is a Guinness Cake from the kitchen goddess herself, Nigella Lawson’s Guinness Cake

I still recoil with horror at the notion of corned beef. The memory of cooked cabbage odor haunts me all these years since I last smelled it, wafting up the stairway from my mother’s kitchen to my lair at the back of the house. I will NEVER cook a cabbage. As always, we will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with chocolate and Guinness, as God intended.

“Your hand and your mouth agreed many years ago that, as far as chocolate is concerned, there is no need to involve your brain.”
― Dave Barry