Kyle's Birthday and a BIG Cake

My baby brother turned 21. Holy shit. I came to Seattle to celebrate, and I made a really huge cake. Guinness chocolate cake with malted milk chocolate frosting (I thought this seemed 21st birthday appropriate). I also pulled out all the stops for this cake, no cut corners. The result was, in my opinion, a pretty beautiful cake.



Guinness Chocolate Cake
1 million servings (not really)

2 C Guinness (or any stout)
2 C butter
1 1/2 C cocoa powder
4 C flour
4 C sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 1/3 C sour cream

Preheat oven to 350. Grease three 8 or 9 inch round pans, line the bottom with parchment paper, and grease the parchment paper (I usually skip the parchment paper step, but not surprisingly, it works really well). Melt the butter and Guinness in a pot on the stove over medium heat. When melted and simmering, and the cocoa powder and whisk until smooth. In a big bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. In another big bowl beat together the eggs and sour cream with an electric mixer. Add the chocolate-beer mixture to the eggs and beat until just combined. Add the flour mixture, and either beat or fold in with a spatula until combined (my bowl was way too full to use anything but a spatula). Pour the batter in to the three pans, bake for about 35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.


Malted Milk Chocolate Frosting

1 lb milk chocolate
1 C heavy cream
1 C malted milk powder
1/4 C light corn syrup
8 tbsps butter at room temperature

Bring the cream to a simmer over medium heat. Add the malted milk powder and whisk until smooth (make sure there are no clumps on the bottom). Put the chocolate in a medium size bowl, and pour the milk over the chocolate. Let sit for 5 minutes, then stir until smooth. Add the corn syrup and cover with a piece of plastic wrap touching the chocolate. When the chocolate has cooled to room temperature, beat in the butter one tbsp at a time with an electric mixer. (Disclaimer: this resulted in frosting too thin to spread for me, but I also didn't let the butter reach room temp. I added some powdered sugar as a thickener, and also cooled the frosting in the fridge)




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