Chef Lisa

Matt’s hobby is homebrewing, specifically beer. He’s started using grains in addition to malt extract, so that leaves me with spent grain to play with. Yum! Unfortunately, my web searches reveal 99.9% of the recipes for spent grains on the web are for bread. Not being one to accept defeat easily, I’ve decided to try adapting recipes on my own.

The first one is Banana Peanut Butter Spent Grain Muffins, based on the Banana Peanut Butter Oatmeal Muffins I found at Eat Me, Delicious. I substituted 1 1/2 cups of spent grains (I believe it was crystal malt) for the 1 cup of quick oats. The muffins are delicious, and extremely moist – almost too moist. Next time, I think I’ll cut the buttermilk back to 1/2 cup.

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This is a Nigella Lawson recipe, from Feast. It’s been slapped up all over the internet, so I figured it was my turn to post it. This is one of Matt’s favorite cakes, and it’s so very rich. The kids like it too. I’ve honestly never made it with the frosting, but I’m including it in the recipe anyway.

The recipe is in metric for the most part, but I’m sure you can figure out the conversions.

Chocolate Guinness Cake

 
Makes one huge cake.

250ml Guinness
250g butter (1 cup)
75g cocoa (a rounded 1/2 cup)
400g caster sugar (2 cups)
140ml sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
275g all purpose flour (2 1/4 cups)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

for the icing:
300g cream cheese
150g icing sugar (1 cup)
125ml cream

Preheat the oven to 180C, and grease and line (yes! lining is essential – if you don’t line it, you’ll never get it out of the pan in one piece) a 23 centimetre springform tin.

Pour the Guinness into a large saucepan, and add the sliced butter. Heat until the butter is melted, and remove the saucepan from the heat. Whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla, then pour into the saucepan. Finally, beat in the flour and bicarb.

Pour the batter into the greased and lined tin, and bake for 45 mins to an hour. Leave to get completely cool in the tin, as it’s quite a damp cake.

For the icing, beat the icing sugar and cream cheese together. Add the cream, and beat again until it’s a spreadable consistency. Ice the top of the black cake until it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.

One of the things I love about the fall is comfort foods.  Big pots of soup and stew, things baked in the oven for a long, long time, spreading the warmth and wonderful smells into the rest of the house.  I wanted to make beer and cheese soup for supper tonight, so I got all the ingredients together and started.  Partway through, I decided I wanted to make a double batch.  I had enough of everything, except the stock.  Then I remembered the jug of apple cider in the fridge.  This soup has become the instant favorite, and will be the preferred cheese soup with my family for years to come.

You’ll notice that this soup uses beef stock rather than chicken stock, like most other cheese soup recipes do. We’ve found we prefer the depth of flavor that comes from the beef stock, and it holds up better to the stronger flavored beers we like to cook with.

Autumn Beer & Cheese Soup

8 oz maple smoked bacon, chopped
2 tbsp butter
1 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced celery
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour
4 cups beef stock
4 cups apple cider
24 oz beer, pale ale preferred
4 cups shredded sharp cheddar

Put bacon into cold soup pot. Cook bacon over medium high heat until crispy. Add the butter, onions, celery and salt, and cook for five minutes, or until the onions and celery are soft. Sprinkle the flour over the onion mixture and cook, stirring constantly, for three minutes.

Add beef stock, apple cider and beer to the pot. Stir well, scraping up all the bits off the bottom of the pan. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cheese, 1 cup at a time, to the soup, stirring until melted.

Serve nice and hot. Garnish with chopped fresh parsley and garlic croutons.

Makes 8 good-sized dinner servings.