Last week at work we had a pod-decorating competition in celebration of the Euro’s. For any Americanos ready, the Euro’s are a football competition that’s similar to the World Cup but only with European countries. Each department selected a team randomly, and this became ‘their team’, we got The Republic of Ireland! We decided to go all out and decorated our pod with shamrocks, giant Guinness’, and a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end. We were pretty happy with our efforts until we went upstairs and saw all the other teams had also gone all out. Back to the drawing board. We were thinking and thinking about what else we could do and then it dawned on us…food, everyone loves free food! So the day before the competition, each of us set out upon an Ireland themed food item. Mini jellies, shamrock rice crispie cakes, and I went for a Guinness chocolate cake. I went with this because my friend Cassandra had made one before and it was delicious even though I don’t really like Guinness so I had asked her for her recipe. Here is the recipe that she gave me;
For the cake;
200g dark brown sugar
250g butter
100g dark chocolate, melted
2 eggs
200ml Guinness
275g self-raising flour
30g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Firstly, I mixed the dark brown sugar with the butter until I got a pale fluffy but smooth mixture. Like I have mentioned before, I only have an electric hand mixer but this worked just fine. Once I had this, I added the melted chocolate and continued to mix. Next the eggs went in, one at a time of course and I made sure it was blended well. The last wet ingredient was then added to the mix, the Guinness. Do this bit by bit to get a smooth mixture. Now it was time for all the dry ingredients. I measured this out into one bowl and then carefully sieved them into the mix. On this part, you should fold in the dry ingredients rather than mixing with the mixer for best results. The mixture will be quite wet, but don’t worry this is how it should be. I then added the mixture to a greased and floured Bundt tin and popped in a preheated oven (180C/350F) for 35 minutes. Don’t forget to check the cake is cooked by inserting a skewer into the middle and making sure it comes out clean. If it is cooked, then remove it from the oven but let it cool for 5-10 mins before trying to take it out of the tin. I made the mistake of taking it out of the tin too quickly which made it crack in a couple places. It wasn’t a huge deal as I knew I would be able to hide this with the icing. Allow the cake to cool on a metal rack before icing.
For the icing;
85g butter
210g icing sugar
3 tbsp. Irish cream
Place the butter and icing sugar into a medium sized bowl and mix together, again I used my electric hand mixer. Once blended, add the Irish cream and continue to mix with the electric mixer. Then, when the cake had fully cooled down, I iced it using an icing knife and finished it off by grating some dark chocolate over the top while the icing was still wet.
It went down a treat at work…success!
The other little thing I did was offered out some free Rainbow Seeds to people so they could grow their own Rainbow. Confused? Well I just bought some Skittles, placed some in little pots, and labelled them as Rainbow Seeds. Everyone loved this idea and thought it was super cute. This is why I am in Marketing ;)
We were happy with our efforts, what do you think?
Unfortunately, we lost out on the competition to the team who had England because they all dressed up as iconic English characters…well played England. It’s a shame the same can’t be said about the actual England team, who crashed out of the competition on Monday night!
Stay tuned over the next couple week as I have just bought some pretty sweet new products which I am going to blog about! I am also planning my first ever vlog…eeekkkk I’m nervous!
Thanks for reading and have a good week!
