Welcome to our series on all the things community cookbooks tell you are delicious in a cake! Today we're diving into beer cake, and all the ways you can experiment with it. If you've meandered over from my Substack newsletter, hi friend! If you've found your way to this recipe post some other way and want to stay up-to-date when I post new content, subscribe to my newsletter!
This recipe is apart of a community cookbook from Grayling, Michigan.
Now Let's Make Some Beer Cake!
For this week's trial and error, I made four variations of the beer cake recipe above. Why, you might ask? Because I couldn't stop thinking about it! In our current world of endless craft beer varieties, there are so many potential ways to customize this cake to create new flavors and experiences. I wanted to see how far I could push this recipe.
I decided to make the cake four ways:
Version 1: The Original Recipe
Version 2: The Butter and Raisin Edition
Version 3: The Cranberry and Orange Edition
Version 4: The Chocolate on Chocolate Edition
Some General Recipe Notes:
This recipe has pretty detailed instructions for a community cookbook cake recipe, which is why I picked it for this first post. It seemed likely to succeed, based on what I know of cake baking.
The step where you use 2T of your dry ingredients to coat the nuts is applicable, no matter what you end up using as your add-in. Coating your add-in with the dry ingredients keeps them from sinking to the bottom of your cake pan as it bakes.
As you're playing around with the recipe, keep in mind that the type of beer you use may impact the rise of your cake. Your leavening agent, the thing that makes the cake rise, is based on the baking soda interacting with the acid in the beer. Some beers are less acidic, some are more acidic. I tried a stout, which falls on the less acidic side, and it turned out fine! Just keep in mind a lager is likely going to give you more puff.
Version 1: The Original Recipe
For Version 1, I followed the recipe exactly as written. I'm not a huge fan of vegetable shortening in baked goods, but I wanted to give the recipe a fair chance. The recipe didn't specify what kind of nut to use, so I used walnuts. The recipe also didn't specify what kind of beer to use, so I chose Budweiser. I wanted to pick a relatively generic beer that would likely have graced the average shelves of a Northern Michigan pantry.
When mixing the cake, everything seemed to be going well. However, when I added the beer, the batter got a little frothy and started to smell...unusual. Not bad, just not like cake. You've been warned.
Joke's on me, though, because once it was baked it smelled AMAZING and tasted awesome! The allspice in particular is what makes this cake's flavor so special.
The tube pan did give me trouble, though, and the cake cracked. User error on that one.
Version 2: The Butter and Raisin Edition
I love butter! Unashamedly! Especially in baked goods. So I knew I had to give this recipe a shot using butter instead of the vegetable shortening. Shortening was typically used as a substitute for butter in baked goods to either save money or for health reasons (especially during the anti-butter craze of the 1980s-90s). Considering I stock my freezer with butter when it goes on sale and the cake already has two! whole! cups! of brown sugar in it, I'm not worried about wealth or health here. I want the best tasting cake I can make! So butter replaced the shortening this time.
For this version, I also substituted Sapporo for the Budweiser and raisins for the nuts. While both Sapporo and Budweiser are lagers, Sapporo is a Japanese beer that has more flavor to it while still being an easy to sip drink. I wanted to up the quality a bit here, without jumping into unusual flavors quite yet. I am also not a huge fan of nuts in my baked goods, so I substituted in raisins. In many dessert recipes from the first half of the 20th century, raisins and/or nuts are utilized to make the recipe feel special, so this stayed true to the general vibes of the recipe. I also ditched the tube pan for a Bundt pan. Again, I wanted to shake things up, but not too much yet.
And I have to say, this version is probably the best of the bunch (it's close between this one and #4). The butter makes the cake more flavorful and moist. The raisins are little bites of sunshine in the cake. The beer really helped elevate the flavor. If you had to pick just one to make, this is the one I'd suggest.
Recipe Adjustments:
Substitute butter for vegetable shortening.
Use Sapporo beer.
Substitute raisins for nuts.
Version 3: The Cranberry and Orange Edition
I knew I wanted to try out a citrus ale in this cake, and I decided to play up the citrus flavors in the process! I kept the butter substitution, and added orange zest to the batter. I also modified the spices by dropping the cloves and adding a teaspoon of ground ginger. The result? This cake tastes like Christmas. I'm not sure why, exactly, but everyone in my family who tried it said the exact same thing. If you are looking for a cake that will taste like the holidays, this is the one.
I had good intentions of using the orange juice to make a glaze for the top, but alas, as you can see, the cake stuck horribly to the tube pan so that ended up not happening. Note to self: when greasing a tube pan, shortening works better than butter.
Another mishap occurred here as well. I substituted half the brown sugar for regular granulated sugar. I was hoping this would give the cake a lighter flavor. It did not. The cake, especially because of the spices and beer flavors, NEEDS that extra little caramelization flavor from the brown sugar. Don't mess with the sugar.
Overall, this version was good, but not the best. My kids ate every single broken crumb off the counter, and I think if I stick with the brown sugar and successfully glaze the cake next time it would definitely be a contender for Christmas morning at our house.
Recipe Adjustments:
Substitute butter for vegetable shortening.
Use a citrus ale for the beer.
Substitute cranberries for the nuts.
Substitute 1tsp of ground ginger for 1/2tsp of cloves.
Add zest of one orange.
Don't mess with the brown sugar, but for the record, I used half brown sugar and half granulated white sugar. Don't do that.
Version 4: The Chocolate on Chocolate Edition
This is the one I was looking forward to the most, and I have to say it did not disappoint. I found a chocolate oatmeal breakfast stout at the grocery store, and decided to lean hard into the chocolate flavors. Chocolate chips were a must. I also added cocoa powder and vanilla, to really pump up the chocolate cake feel.
After the tube pan betrayed me in Version 3, I went back to my trusty Bundt pan. Unfortunately, I botched it, probably because I didn't actually wait for the cake to cool. In my defense, I had a rather impatient audience who simply would not wait for a cool cake without wailing. Sacrifices were made to appease.
Overall, this version is a very close tie for second place! I was a bit on the fence about whether to keep the spices in the cake, and ultimately I chose to. I think if I go the chocolate route again, though, I'll leave them out. The cocoa powder and vanilla are able to hold their own next to the stout.
Recipe Adjustments:
Substitute butter for vegetable shortening.
Use a chocolate stout.
Substitute chocolate chips for the nuts.
Substitute 1/4c of cocoa powder for 1/4c of the flour (in other words, use 2-3/4c flour and 1/4c cocoa powder).
Add 2tsp vanilla.
Next time, I'd omit the spices. I didn't this time, and regretted it.
In Conclusion...
...beer makes a FANTASTIC cake. And while my experiments here didn't always work out perfectly, they were all delicious.
If you take one thing away from this post, I hope it's this: it's ok to not follow the recipe exactly.
It's your kitchen, your taste preferences, and you're rules. So go forth! Have fun! Bake a beer cake! And if you do, come tell me about it, I'd love to hear how it turns out!