Chocolate and Dutch stout cake with white chocolate-cream cheese frosting

A good chocolate cake recipe to have in your back pocket is one of the greatest things for anyone who loves to bake, and even though classic chocolate cake recipes are all pretty much the same, this one is somewhat different.

It has a couple of ingredients that make it extra special, Dutch stout beer and yoghurt, that transform its flavor and texture, making it much more interesting than your average chocolate cake.

I love adding beer and particularly its dark and malty cousin, the stout, in all kinds of chocolate-based desserts as it has the magical ability to bring out the flavor of the cocoa even more, as evidenced in this cake; a dense (but not heavy) and moist cake with a deeply chocolatey flavor and a subtle bitterness from the stout that balances the sweetness of the luscious, creamy frosting.

It’s the sort of cake that can stand on its own, without the topping, but pairing it with the white chocolate and cream cheese frosting that’s buttery, creamy, smooth and perfectly complementing the flavors of the cake, makes for an excellent combination.

It’s the kind of cake that you can’t resist having more than piece of, which means it’s rather dangerous, so consider yourselves warned. Oh, and apologies to those of you avoiding sweets. #sorrynotsorry

Without being too fussy or difficult to execute, it’s a cake fitting for a celebration or special occasion, see Easter Day to close out the feast with something chocolatey and delicious, birthdays, name days or anniversaries, but also for an everyday occasion, see afternoon coffee or tea, or just when you want something sweet to have around the house for those nagging chocolate cravings.

Chocolate and Dutch stout cake with white chocolate-cream cheese frosting

This is the sort of cake that tastes better the next day, so you could easily bake it the day before, let it cool completely, store it in an airtight container or wrap it tightly with plastic wrap and continue the next day with the frosting. This is especially handy if you are making the cake for a celebration and you need to prepare as many dishes as you can in advance.

Stout is a dark and quite bitter and strong beer. I used a Dutch, dry, extra stout, that has an even stronger taste, but you can use a dry, regular stout as well, preferably Dutch.

This is the second time that I’m sharing with you a chocolate cake for Easter. The first one was back in 2011 and was this wonderful two-layered chocolate Easter egg nest cake with chocolate truffle eggs!

Yield: 10 servings (or more if sliced thinly)

Ingredients

for the cake
300 g unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus extra for greasing the pan
100 g Dutch-processed cocoa powder (sifted if lumpy)
150 ml dark, dry, extra (or regular) stout, preferably Dutch, measured without foam
250 g all-purpose flour
375 g white granulated sugar
10 g (2 tsp) baking powder
Pinch of sea salt
3 large eggs
150 g thick Greek yoghurt, full-fat (I use Total Fage)
15 ml (1 Tbsp) pure vanilla extract

for the frosting
200 g white chocolate (at least 32% cocoa butter content), cut into small pieces
125 g unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
225 g cream cheese, full-fat, at room temperature
225 g icing sugar, sifted

Special equipment: fine sieve, 23 cm round springform pan, baking paper, wooden spoon, stiff rubber spatula


Preparation

for the cake
Preheat your oven to 180°C.

Butter the sides and bottom of a 23cm round spring-form pan and line the bottom with a round piece of baking paper. (See here how to cut a round piece of baking paper).

In a small saucepan, add the butter and melt over a medium heat. Turn off the heat and add the cocoa powder and stout. Whisk to combine. You should now have a smooth and glossy mixture (see photo right below).

In a large bowl, add the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, and mix with wooden spoon. Make a well in the center and crack in the eggs. Add the yoghurt, the butter-cocoa powder-stout mixture and the vanilla, and using a large wire whisk, mix well until you have a smooth and shinny batter, for about 2 minutes. You could use an electric hand-held mixer to do this if you find it difficult to whisk by hand. In this case, mix for just a minute until the ingredients are totally combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan and place on the lower rack of the preheated oven. Bake for 40 minutes, then transfer to the middle rack and bake for a further 10 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. It’s a good idea to start checking for doneness at the 45 minute mark since not all ovens are the same. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for about 30 minutes before removing the cake from the pan very carefully, leaving the cake on the rack (with baking paper still attached at the bottom) to cool completely before frosting it. It will take about 5 hours for the cake to cool completely. Don’t frost it before it cools completely because the frosting will melt over the cake.

for the frosting
In the meantime, prepare the frosting. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave, being careful not to overheat it. Let it cool.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, add the butter and cream cheese, and beat using a stiff, rubber spatula or a wooden spoon until the two ingredients are combined and there are no visible streaks of butter or cream cheese in the mixture. Pour the melted and cooled white chocolate in the butter-cream cheese mixture and beat well with the spatula or wooden spoon until you have a smooth mixture without any lumps. It needs a bit of elbow grease to become smooth, but it’ll get there. Don’t be tempted to use an electric mixer for this as it will soften the frosting too much and you’ll end up with a runny instead of a fluffy frosting. Finally, add the sifted icing sugar and beat with the spatula or wooden spoon until you have a smooth and fluffy frosting.

Assemble the cake
When the cake has completely cooled, remove the baking paper from the bottom and transfer it onto a cake stand or cake platter. If there’s any doming of the cake (there usually is - there is also going to be some cracking on top), there’s no need to cut it off because the frosting will do a great job of covering it. Add the frosting on top of the cake, a spoonful at a time, spreading it right up to the edges. Make swirls using a small spatula or a palette knife to give it volume.

You can store it in the fridge for a day, covered with plastic wrap. The frosting will firm up in the fridge.

Serve and enjoy!

• Adapted from Donal Skehan

Dark chocolate-dipped goat’s milk butter cookies

I’ve never met anyone in my life who would say no to a cookie if offered one, and as a person who likes to bake and offer cookies to anyone who would take them, I have to say that there can never be too many cookie recipes in anyone’s baking arsenal.

This one deserves a place in yours.

It’s a butter cookie but not made with any old butter, but with goat’s milk butter. Greeks use goat’s milk butter often, but the kind we mostly use is a combination of goat’s and sheep’s milk butter that’s been clarified (it’s the one we use for Christmas kourabiedes for example). This kind of butter, however, is not clarified and it’s made with just goat’s milk.

The difference between the clarified goat’s-and-sheep’s milk butter, cow’s butter and this one, is in the color, the texture and the flavor. This butter is white and shiny. It’s very creamy, even creamier than cow’s milk butter, and not grainy as clarified goat’s-and-sheep’s milk butter is. It has an ever-so-slightly tangy flavor that is also richer and more complex than cow’s milk butter and understandably so, since goat’s milk has a higher fat content than cow’s milk. It has a more gentle flavor than goat’s-and-sheep’s milk butter, not quite as aggressive, and it’s a little sweet, with sour and umami notes.

Adding it to these cookies makes all the difference as it has a particular effect on the flavor and texture compared to cow’s milk butter. These are like Viennese cookies but thinner and a bit more delicate, somewhat crumbly and soft yet crispy and impossibly buttery, and partly covering them with chocolate elevates them to another level of deliciousness.

Hope you enjoy them.

Dark chocolate-dipped goat’s milk butter cookies

Don’t substitute the goat’s milk butter with clarified goat’s-and-sheep’s milk butter because they’re not the same in consistency or flavor and you won’t get the desired result.

Use good quality chocolate with 55-60% cocoa solids. For a more “adult” version of the cookie, use a 70-75% cocoa solids.

By the way, pictured with the cookies is the best ever, heavily spiced hot cocoa I have ever made or tasted. I need to share with you, soon!

Yield: 28 cookies

Ingredients
200 g goat’s milk butter, softened
50 g icing sugar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
200 g all-purpose flour, sifted
2 tsp corn flour, sifted
½ tsp baking powder, sifted

200 g dark chocolate (55-60% coca solids), chopped

Special equipment: stand mixer or hand-held electric mixer, fine sieve, plastic wrap, baking paper, baking pan


Preparation
In the bowl of your stand mixer (or in a large bowl) add the butter and sugar and beat with the paddle attachment (or with an electric hand-held mixer) for about 5 minutes on medium-high speed until pale and light. Add the vanilla and beat to combine. Then add the sifted flour, corn flour and baking powder and mix until combined and you have a smooth dough that will be somewhat firm.

Take it out of the bowl and shape it into a cylinder (log), 3-4 cm thick. Tightly wrap with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 170°C.
Line a baking pan with baking paper.

Take the log out of the fridge, unwrap and discard the plastic wrap. Cut the log into 1 cm thick cookies using a thin knife and place them on the prepared baking sheet spacing them apart by 5-6 cm as they will spread during baking.
Bake in the middle rack of the preheated oven for about 13 minutes, until pale golden, turning the baking pan around midway through baking time.

Remove the pan from the oven and allow the cookies to cool for 5 minutes on the pan. Then transfer them gently using a spatula to a wire rack to cool completely.
Melt the chocolate and dip one end of each cookie in it. Leave on a piece of baking paper to set.

They keep well for more than a week in a cookie tin at room temperature.

Raw brownies

Raw brownies; because sometimes you don’t have time to turn the oven on, regardless of the fact that it would have been a very welcomed heat source.

Because you want something healthier and more nutritious than your regular brownie. Something that’s guilt free and less sweet without, however, missing out on great flavor and texture, because these raw brownies have both.

Made with Medjool dates that have an intense caramel flavor and a soft and fudgy texture, with all sorts of nuts —almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts—, with cacao powder, but can be made with regular Dutch-processed cocoa powder as well, a hint of espresso and some maple syrup for added sweetness.

They’re intensely nutty, with a rich date and cocoa flavor and they’re not too sweet, with a lovely balance of acidity and bitterness coming from the cacao and espresso powder. They’re fudgy, soft and crunchy at the same time, and I know this is going to sound very weird to you, but their flavor reminds me of nutella, only without the cloying sweetness.

There’s a harmony of flavors in these raw, no-bake brownies and they are perfect for those of you who appreciate the distinct flavors of each ingredient rather than eating something that’s overly sweet.

Enjoy them in the morning as a quick pick-me-up, with your afternoon coffee or as a late-night sweet treat to cure those dangerous, for some of us, cravings.

Raw brownies

These brownies are just two-bites each. You can certainly make them bigger if you want.

I use Medjool dates because they’re soft and jammy with a caramel flavor. I wouldn’t suggest you use another kind but if you can’t find them, and the sort of dates you use are too dry, soak them for a while in some freshly squeezed orange juice to soften them up.

Yield: 20 small brownies

Ingredients
70 g almonds with skin on
45 g walnut halves
30 g raw cacao powder or Dutch-processed cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting over the top of the brownies
Pinch of ground espresso beans (or instant espresso powder)
Pinch of sea salt
160 g Medjool dates (weight with pits), pitted
1½ Tbsp good-quality maple syrup
20 g blanched hazelnuts, roughly chopped

Special equipment: large food processor, round spring-form pan (15 cm in diameter), baking paper, plastic wrap


Preparation
In the bowl of your food processor, add the almonds and walnuts and grind them finely. Then add the cacao powder, espresso and salt, and process briefly to combine. Transfer the mixture into a clean bowl and set aside.

In the bowl of your food processor, now add the pitted dates and the maple syrup and process until you have a sticky ball. Remove the mixture from the food processor using a spatula and place it into another clean bowl.

Return the cacao-nuts mixture into the bowl of your food processor and with the motor running, add small handfuls of the date mixture through the food tube (hole at the top of the lid), and process until you have thick and moist crumbs, and the brownie mixture holds together when pressed in your hand.

Empty the brownie mixture into a bowl, add the chopped hazelnuts and mix with a spatula to combine and evenly distribute the nuts in the mixture.

Place a piece of baking paper at the bottom of the pan (then add the sides of the pan and lock it) and empty the brownie mixture inside. Press it with your hands to flatten it and even it out. It should be firm. You can either leave it as a round, or do as I did and remove it from the pan and shape it into a square. You can do this by pressing the sides with your hands, touching the baking paper rather than the brownie mixture so it doesn’t soften. Make sure to gently flatten the top too, as the brownie mixture will be slightly pushed up during shaping. Mine turned out as a square of 14x14 cm and with a 2 cm thickness.

Once shaped, fold over it the baking paper and then tightly cover it with a large piece of plastic wrap and place it in the freezer for 30 minutes to firm up.
Then, take the plastic wrap off and cut into 20 square pieces (2 bites each), making sure that it is very firm before you do so.

If you plan to eat it straight away, dust the top with cacao powder and serve. Otherwise, dust with cacao powder when you are ready to serve it.

You can keep it in the fridge, covered well with baking paper and wrapped tightly with plastic wrap, or in an airtight container, for at least 2 weeks.
You can also keep it in the freezer for up to 2 months.