By Greg B.  I know I know I know, about a year ago we did a similar post.  But you know what, this website needs more dessert recipes!  If you scan backwards through the posts and recipes, you’ll see the both Mike and I have a penchant for cooking some form of animal, be it fish, mammal or poultry, pair it with a side of cooked vegetables and maybe maybe add some form of a starch component on the side.  And while this style of food, coupled with posts of beer and wine basically explain my diet, I feel like we’re missing out on a whole population of readers who are out there, right now, wonder ‘should I pair beer with dessert?  How do I do it?’.  Well, that’s all about to change.  I’m going to try to utilize my expert baking friend Jessica, who just so happens to have a sweet tooth, and pair her dessert creations with beer.  So get ready, food and wine blog is about to get slightly more sugary!  So from here down, I’ll let Jessica explain how to produce her recipe (with my occasional beer interjections!)

For all you carb conscience folks in the audience…here is a simple flourless chocolate cake recipe.  OK so it is not exactly low carb, but it does not have flour, eliminating at least some of those stick to your hips simple sugars .

Materials:

• ½ cup of high quality H₂0
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup white sugar
• 18 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 6 eggs

Equipment:

• Small sauce pan
• Double boiler (or a heat safe glass bowl that fits over a pot)
• Rubber spatula
• Stand mixer OR hand mixer and large bowl
• 9-10 inch round cake pan
• Larger pan that fits cake pan

Methods:

First you want to grease your cake pan (I use cooking spray, but butter would work as well), make sure that you get all the little nooks and crannies because you will be turning out this cake and you want it to come out nice and clean.  Then preheat the oven to 300 degrees. I usually take the butter out of the fridge at this point and put it on the oven so it is not completely rock solid when added later.  Now the assembly begins.

Dissolve the sugar and salt in the water over medium heat in a small sauce pan.  Make sure the heat is not too high because the sugar will burn.  After dissolved, remove from heat and set aside.

Now for the melting of the chocolate…I like to use a double boiler (in my case a glass bowl on top of a pot of water), but you could use a microwave.  Very simple: fill the pot about half way with water (so that the water won’t boil off, but is not physically touching the bowl) and put over medium heat.  Put the chocolate in the bowl and stir continuously.  At some point during this process you will feel the urge to turn up the heat because it is taking too long to melt…don’t do this…I made this mistake once and ended up with a broken bowl and a mini chocolate explosion (not as fun as it sounds).

Once the chocolate is melted, transfer the chocolate into the bowl of a stand mixer (or other bowl with a hand mixer).  Stir on low and add the butter one tablespoon at a time so that it dissolves into the chocolate.  Now and add the sugar water. Once incorporated, add the eggs one at a time.  Your batter is done, congrats!

Now pour the batter into the prepared cake pan.  Set the pan into the larger pan and fill halfway with boiling water (I use the water I used in the double boiler).  Bake for 45 minutes at 300 degrees.  The center will still look a little jiggly.  Chill in the fridge overnight.  Turn out onto a serving plate (facilitated by dipping the pan in to water).  Garnish as you wish with berries etc.  And most importantly…ENJOY

Beer:

Many beers would go extremely well with this cake.  I, however, chose to pair two beers with it.  First and foremost, the beer that you might be able to find in the store, Brouwerij de Molen’s SSS.  This beer is amazing for cakes like this.  The beer has a great level of carbonation, which helps refresh the palate and cleanse the mouth between bites of this very dense, intense chocolate cake.  But it also brings with it the chocolate malts and a bit of bitterness to pair very nicely with the semi-sweet chocolate in the cake.  Plus, if this wasn’t a good enough pairing, the beer has a nice slightly fruity yeast component, so in our case this paired nicely with the raspberry accents on the cake.  Fantastic!  The second beer of the night was my remake of the 2008 Winter spiced ale, which brought a lot of spices to bear on the cake, but held it’s own in terms of structure and flavors.  Really, for a cake as delicious as this, any good stout is going to be robust enough to work well for a pairing.  They key will be finding your favorite style of stout for pairing intense chocolate desserts with (I recommend Russian Imperial Stouts), but the best part of not knowing which beer you’ll like best, is experimenting and finding out.  Happy beer hunting!