Hi CC'ers

I want to try baking a Chocolate Stout cake this weekend. I researched some recipes and most of them recommended boiling the stout and then melting the butter in it.

Is this an abosultely necessary step? Is there a special reason why the stout must be boiled first?

Please let me know because I would rather use me technique:

- boil water (in this case, stout) and stir in cocoa powder
- cream butter and sugar
- add eggs and flavouring
- alternately add dry ingredients and liquid

Hope that you can help.

Stacey

I'm not exactly sure if it's CRUCIAL that the butter be melted with the stout, but in my recipe, I bring the stout and butter just to a boil, then add the cocoa powder and it all sort of emulsifies into a thick, buttery, beery, and chocolatey syrup. Which you then add to the egg and sour cream mixture, and stir in the dry ingredients and bake- to me, it actually simplifies things a lot since you don't need to cream anything.

Any particular reason you don't want to melt the butter with the stout?

Hi frankdiabetes

Not really...I was just hoping that I could simply replace the water in my recipe with the stout.

Hmm I don't see why that would be necessary. I just use my regular chocolate cake recipe and sub out the coffee for guinness. Here is the recipe that I use.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Double-Chocolate-Layer-Cake-101275

I guess I must heat the beer up though since the recipe uses hot coffee to melt the chocolate. I usually microwave the coffee to make it hot enough so I guess that's what I've done with the beer. I honestly don't recall!

Hi confectionsofahousewife

Thanks for responding.

I did just that..replace the liquid in my chocolate cake recipe with the Guinness and it turned out quite good.

Thanks again.