Vote vote vote vote vote!!!!
(How did it get this LATE?!? I have a blog post to create out of a pumpkin and several confused mice. I swear I’ve only just got in from tower practise. The passage of the last four and a half hours is an illusion. It’s not even nine thirty yet. Really. And the hellhounds are settling down to stare at their dinner. . . . )
You’re right. There isn’t anything in it for anyone but the forty-four people with eligible recipes*, but there should still be at least forty four votes, plus eight mods, a Blogmom, and a hellgoddess. And a few disinterested philanthropists.**
We do not yet have sixty votes in the contest for yet another signed copy of the glittery new SUNSHINE. We want sixty votes. Here: http://robinmckinleysblog.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=1 453&start=0&
If actually reading the recipes*** is giving you blurred vision and an accelerated heart rate, nobody will know if you merely vote for the name you like best. If you pass by with a shudder Bloody Doomsday Chocolate Raspberry Swirl Vampire Muffins and Godzilla’s Green Tea Tiramisu, you might pause instead at the equally dangerous but more restrained Death Brownies or Death by Chocolate†. Or if you want something you can take home to mother there’s Chocolate, Cranberry and Almond Muffins or Lemon Tea Cake or Alan’s Cookies. If you’re a romantic, you might choose Rose Spirals or Midsummer Bliss or Honeycake. And you can ignore that middle-aged New England exile crying in her beer over the Old Fashioned Blueberry Cake. As I keep saying, Old England is my home, even if I don’t sound like it, and there isn’t a lot I seriously miss about living Stateside, barring not sounding like a foreigner every time I open my mouth.†† But there are one or two things I do miss, and little intense Maine blueberries are one of them. Sob.
But, speaking of beer, I feel that perhaps you need putting in the mood for voting for your favourite recipe. So here’s something else with chocolate in it. And beer.
This is an adaptation of a recipe on a newspaper clipping from my early days in this country, which makes it old enough it’s turning brown and curling up around the staples holding it to the page in my cooking notebook.
Sooty Cake
125g butter
2 c plain flour
250 ml stout or porter: you want the darkest, richest beer you can find. The kind that has echoes on your tongue long after you’ve finished swallowing a mouthful. I live near the Best Pub in Hampshire and it makes a porter to die for. Except they don’t make it all the time. Sometimes you have to settle for draught Guinness.
2c dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/4c + cocoa: I use about 5T. You could try 6. I probably will the next time I make it.
1 tsp baking soda
Grease and flour an 8” cake pan with collapsible/detachable sides, although if you line it with parchment paper I’m sure you’d be fine with the solid kind. Heat oven to 350°F.
Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Add eggs one at a time, and beat furiously. It’s going to curdle the minute you add the beer, so you want it as homogenous as possible at this stage.
Blend cocoa with a little of the beer in a separate bowl to make a kind of runny paste, then beat the rest of the beer into the butter/egg mixture. Beat in about half the flour, then sprinkle the baking soda over with about half the remaining flour and beat all that in. Then beat in the beer-cocoa, and last the final one-quarter of the flour. Beer is variable, like so much else in life and baking, and if your batter seems excessively liquid, add some more flour. First time I made this it didn’t rise properly—or rather it rose and then fell in the middle—but it cooked through and tasted great and even the texture was fine. Once I cut it up (supposing you are a master at the craft of cutting up fallen cakes to not show their fallenness, which I am) no one would guess. Next time I made it I allowed myself to paranoiacally add about another ¼ c of flour, and it behaved itself, but beer varies, especially, I think, home-made beer from the Best Pub in Hampshire. You’ll get a finer crumb, the less flour you think you can get away with, but this isn’t necessarily a cake that needs to be very fine.
Pour into cake tin and bake for 60-70 minutes, till it’s risen but (you hope) fairly firm in the middle and pulling gently away from the sides of the pan. Let cool a good half hour before you even try to get it out of the pan.
It’s very good with Earl Grey tea (if you like Earl Grey. Good Earl Grey, not perfumed floor sweepings). Just by the way.
* * *
* Unless of course we award a random win to a random voter. We might. We haven’t decided. It depends on a number of crucial, high level technological factors, plus whether I can find another copy of the new SUNSHINE somewhere, holding up a short table leg or something. You won’t mind if there’s a minor crevasse in the middle, will you?
So you should vote. Just in case there’s still something to win. I promise if the random-picker widget picks me I’ll pass the slightly dented copy of SUNSHINE to the person on my left.
** Drooling optional
*** Ajlr has thoughtfully buried a link to the recipe thread in the vote box
† Mmmmm. Extreme is good. Personally I like the idea of vampire muffins. Although I might hang a nice little bundle of garlic over the bread bin till they were all gone.
†† Remember however that I’ve also said that I’m glad I failed to take on the protective colouration of a British accent. I am a foreigner, and it’s just as well that whoever I’m talking to knows this immediately so when he/she makes reference to Blue Peter^ or It Ain’t Half Hot Mum^^ or expects me to know where Yarm is I don’t look like a total dipstick for having no clue. Yes, it’s peculiar putting roots down somewhere you clearly don’t belong, but hey. Think of it as similar to putting Sequestrene plant tonic on your camellias. Give me enough chocolate and I can live anywhere.
^ Which I still think sounds rude
^^ What?
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