Founders Porter Cake

For Mere's 25th birthday, I decided to give something a shot. I wanted to bake her a cake using beer! I thought it'd be a nice way to make her something creative that she'd enjoy using something that she loves. As such, I'd picked up a sixer of Founders Porter on a recent beer excursion and was determined to make a cake out of it ever since drinking it. I'm sure you could sub in any beer for this, as long as it's chocolate/coffee heavy. What this recipe gives you is a two-layer cake with chocolate ganache filling and icing.

Cakes!

2 8-inch cake pans

1 12-oz Bottle Founders Porter

3 Sticks Unsalted Butter

1 1/8th Cup Cocoa Powder

Melt the butter in a large saucepan/medium sized pot over medium heat. As the sticks are almost metled, add the founders porter and stir until flat. After those two ingredients are well mixed, slowly stir in the cocoa powder until the whole thing is a creamy chocolate mix and approaches a simmer. As soon as this begins simmering, preheat the oven to 325. Make sure your racks are in the middle.

3 Cups All-Purpose Flour

3 Cups Sugar

1 Tsp Salt

2 Tsp Baking Soda

While the previous porter creation is heating/mixing... mix all these ingredients in a huge f'in bowl. Make sure they're well mixed.

3 Large Eggs

1 Cup Sour Cream

Mix these together well at the same time in a separate smaller bowl.

When the porter/chocolate mixture is done, add to the eggs/cream mixture and mix really well. Then, take the resulting mixture and add it to the dry ingredients and mix until smooth. I recommend using a hand mixer on the lowest setting and tasting it to make sure the mixture isn't grainy. Grease and flower the two cake pans, and add the cake mix to them. You should bake them at 325 for 20 minutes, and check them with a toothpick every 5 minutes after that. They should stay in until the toothpicks come out clean. Take them out, let them cool for 30 minutes at least, level one of the cakes (they will dome,) and get ready for the ganache.

Ganache Filling!

This one's fairly simple. You're going to need the following things

2/3 Cup Heavy Cream

1 Cup Semi-Sweet Morsels

Put the cream in a small pot and heat until simmering. Put the morsels in a heat-proof bowl and cover with the simmering cream. As soon as the cream hits, begin mixing. This should result in a ganache at almost perfect temperature to apply to your cakes. Let it cool for maybe 5 minutes and then smear it on the leveled cake in a somewhat even fashion. What you do with the rest is up to you, I drizzled it over the stop of the non-leveled cake and spread so that it was somewhat even, then left it out to cool (obviously, at this point the two layers of the cake should be connected by the ganache.)

Frosting!

3-4 Cups Confectioners Sugar

1 Stick (1/2 Cup) Unsalted Butter

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

2-4 Tbs Milk

Using a hand mixer, mix these ingredients. You can add more milk if it's too solid. Butter should be room temperature when you add it (probably should have said that earlier... oh well.) I used this to glaze the top of the cake... shortly thereafter after added candles and served!

You can actually taste the beer in there, the Founders Porter added a nice balanced coffee/chocolate influence. Most importantly, she loved it (despite me missing some of the finer points of cake baking and causing the cake to be aesthetically a little messed up.) Thanks so much to Mere D. for the recipe - This cake was adapted from the Irish Car Bomb Cupcake recipe over at SmittenKitchen.