Cooking with Beer: Experiment 1

Hi All,

After enjoying the recent easter beers with chocolate-assorted foods, and seeing I haven't yet used my 'Cooking with Beer' book Gary gave me a while back, I thought it time i actually started to experiment a bit with two of my faves.

In making a mud cake and potato bake today, I thought I would replace water, milk or cream with beer, the result seen in this photo. Seeing I still have some of our beer choc milkshake beer (with extra sediment) left over I thought i would try it out on these, as we added a lactose boost to it. The sediment went mostly in the potato bake, as i normally use cream in it, with the little liquid in the bottle going into the cake and its icing. I have not tried that cake, but seeing it was just a packet mud cake, I doubt much will come through of the beer. However, having just had the potato bake for lunch, i can say that the beer definitely sweetened the food, taking away from the savory taste of it. it also tended to be a bit drier which wasn't very pleasing either. all in all it was strange tasting a potato bake this way.

As for the cake, am hoping to take it to my mate Jaimi's final gig tonight before he heads to Germany, so hopefully can smuggle it in to the Northcote Social Club for that. I wonder if anyone will be able to pick the secret ingredient.

In other beer news, have just seen a bottlo near me on Burwood Highway called Slowbeer, that has a great range of the Rogue beers from Portland and some other good beers to try. They also seem to be quite good on price, so looking forward to going by today for a quick look around (yes, 30 mins is a quick look for me).

Well, better get going to make it to Slowbeer before the gig tonight.

Cheers,

Beefy

Additional: we did have the cake and the latest malt brew after the gig, and while we also found the cake to be a bit dry (must remember to use more liquid than sediment beer in the future), but did find the caramel sweetness of the beer this add too the flavour of the choc mud cake. sweet!