Today, I am drinknig O'Dell Brewing Company's Lugene Chocolate Milk Stout, and I am pairing it with the chipotle bacon chocolate cake that I made yesterday.
The pour:
I poured Lugene into a tulip glass. the beer is intensely dark, nearly black, with a caramel colored, somewhat thin head, which dissipates fairly quickly and leaves little to no lacing.
The nose:
Dark, toasty, almost coffee notes, with a hint of chocolate below. Smells delicious
The palate:
Sweet with a hint of dark chocolate and coffee biterness. Smooth, with ery littel lingering aftertaste. A great dessert beer.
The cake:
As anyone who follows my FB feed probably knows, I made this cake yesterday. I followed the recipe that can be found here: https://www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipe-details.aspx?id=8108 , but with the following changes:
1) I used retained bacon fat instead of vegetable oil.
2) The local store did not have the Special Dark Cocoa, so I used regular Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder.
3) I added eight strips of bacon, baked hard in the oven and chopped medium coarse. In retrospect, it could have used more, and cooked it even harder.
4) I also added 4 teaspoons of chipotle powder.
The cake was frosted with the recipe on the same page, except that I again substituted regular cocoa for Special Dark.
Honestly, by most measures of cake, this one is amazing--dense yet moist, richly chocolate. The only way to improve that aspect of the thing is probably to use the special dark cocoa (Maggie will disagree with me--she prefers milk chocolate). It even stands up to my experimentation well. The downsides to this cake are just that--my experimentations. I have been wanting to make a chocolate chipotle cake for a few years now, and when the idea hit me to add bacon to the mix I had to do it. The effect I was going for would have more bacon, however, and more texture from the bacon, and less chipotle. More of a hint of spice under notes of smoky bacon, rather than vice versa, as it is now.
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