#danishinspired

Danish-inspired Imperial Stout "Cake" on http://healthylifemix.com/danish-inspired-imperial-stout-cake/

Danish-inspired Imperial Stout "Cake"

I follow the folks at Baked in New York City over on Twitter (@brooklynbaker)—they’ve put together some of my favorite baking-oriented cookbooks I’ve read in the last several years. A day or so ago they linked to a blog post describing a traditional Danish Christmas cake based around dark, malty Imperial Stout. I had remembered drinking a dark, extremely-heavy-on-the-vanilla stout a few years ago that sounded like it’d be a good fit for the recipe, and stopped by my local craft brew supplier to see if I could find it again. No luck, but I did end up grabbing a bottle of Great Divide Brewing Company’s Chocolate Oak-Aged Yeti Imperial Stout.

Me being me, and with the chocolate component to the stout (which comes from cocoa nibs in the brewing process subbing for some of the bittering hops), I couldn’t leave well enough alone, and doctored the recipe a bit to reinforce the flavors in the beer a bit, and add a touch of fat to the batter, which struck me as mighty lean. This is the end result, a still fairly lean "cake" (really more of a quick bread), that edges a bit towards a gingerbread. Very tasty, and I can pick up some of the qualities of the beer in the final product (conveniently, the recipe only calls for about half of the 22 oz bottle I bought, so there was some for the cook to drink while baking for, um, comparison’s sake. Yeah, that’s it.)

Arranged the cake and some slices on parchment, with a bottlecap and bottle opener. Sadly, the bottlecap is not from the Yeti, which I couldn’t find, but from the Belgian-style I had with dinner. I played with cloning the name out, but the end result didn’t look very good, so I’ll live with it.

Nikon D7000 w/Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8 prime, 1/250s @ ƒ/11, ISO100. Two SB-700s, both at full power at 24mm zoom, shot through white umbrellas, one to the right and top, one to the bottom left. Color processing in Aperture, with a bit of structure added to the parchment in Nik Viveza.

Ingredients

18 oz. all-purpose flour 18 oz. dark brown sugar 3 tbl. cocoa powder 2 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. cinnamon 1 tbl. freshly grated ginger 1/2 tsp. ground allspice 2 oz. melted butter 12 oz. Imperial Stout 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1 tbl. strong coffee 2 eggs

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 9"x5" loaf pan and line the bottom with parchment.

Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, salt, spices, and baking soda and combine well, breaking up all the lumps of brown sugar.

In another bowl, combine the stout, coffee, vanilla, and eggs, and whisk to combine. Whisk in the melted butter (it will clump a bit, that’s fine).