HOLY BEER BREAD, BATMAN.

Well, yesterday, whilst once again flipping through the Alton Brown cookbook I checked out from the library, I decided I was going to make beer bread. I bought a six pack of beer. The logical thing to do would have been to just buy a tall can, so I wouldn't have to buy an entire six pack for a recipe that only calls for 12oz of beer.

However, I didn't work today, so I decided to imbibe a little last night, saving only what I needed for the recipe. I don't drink a whole lot, but once in a while it's fun to get a little drunk and mess about online. It sounds like some lonely nerd thing to do, but it really isn't. I might just be online but it's still a social thing. It's cheaper than going out, and safer, since nobody has to worry about driving, or any of that.

Anyway, you came here to read about a recipe. Specifically, a beer bread recipe.

So, I did lie a little in that post about the cake. I said I would try to challenge myself. This wasn't really a challenge. I've made bread before (soda bread, banana bread, and cornbread) but not specifically beer bread, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Here's the recipe. It's not the clearest photo but I believe you can make everything out.

First, the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and the dill.

In which I try to take a halfway decent photo of a bowl of flour.

Completely unnecessary picture of the baking powder.

Now, we don't have whole wheat flour as the recipe called for, so I went ahead and used the regular all purpose flour we've got. Also, I'm not terribly fond of dill, so I decided to use some Italian seasoning.

Can you tell I'm a fan of macro shots?

Now, for the cheese.

We didn't quite have the amount the recipe called for, but close enough.

Then, the beer.

It was on sale. I didn't want to go with "OMG SUPER EXPENSIVE BEER" but I also didn't want to go with the bottom of the barrel cheapass beer, so I decided on this stuff. It's not my first choice but it's all right, considering I'm not much of a beer drinker.

Cue pouring the batter into the pan. I had the recipe book set on a folding chair (Didn't want it on the dirty counter, seeing as it's still a pretty pristine library book), and in the recipe directions, I misread "batter" as "butter" and spent a good minute or two staring blankly at the page before I went "DUH, I CAN'T READ, THAT SAYS BATTER. LOL. "

I rummaged around in our pantry but we didn't have sunflower seeds, or a viable replacement, so I skipped that bit.

I put it in the oven, set the timer, and then ran off to Netflix to watch another couple episodes of Chobits (which I recently began watching in a fit of really terrible boredom whilst browsing my instant queue). 

About 50 odd minutes later, this was the result.

Cue unnecessary mention of the cute teapot in the background. Got it at the same second hand store where I purchased these lovely, lovely teacups

Japanese ceramicware hand painted in Hong Kong. I paid 20 bucks for the set of 4.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Here's another shot of the bread.

Look at that cheese. NOM NOM NOM

Once it had cooled a bit, I cut myself a piece. I took one bite and just stood there with the bread in my hand, saying "Holy shit. Alton you fantastic bastard, this bread is amazing."

To be honest, it was Alton Brown that made me want to start getting into cooking. A few years ago, when I was in college, I wasn't really a foodie at all. In fact I preferred to avoid cooking because I was too scared I'd burn/cut/etc myself. 

I did enjoy watching the odd cooking show, and (pun intended) if any cooking show fits that criteria it's Good Eats. At first I just watched it because Alton Brown is completely ridiculous/a really huge goofball, and because I had a crush on him (still do, in fact). It was one particular instance when I excitedly baked some pumpkin bars and took them to my friends at college that I realized "Hey, I really like cooking stuff and then having people enjoy what I've made". 

It sounds like a silly fangirly thing to say, but it really was Good Eats that made me want to get into cooking.

Anyway. For the next recipe I make, I will actually challenge myself and select a recipe I've never made before. 

Devil's food cake.

I haven't posted for ages because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with this blog, but I thought it could be an outlet for my cooking escapades, the times I actually feel like taking step by step pictures of what I make. I don't want to work in food service but there's a certain charge I get when I make something for people, and they end up eating it and really enjoying it. Even if it's just making dinner.

Anyway. Fast forward to this orgasmic devil's food cake. But first a bit of backstory. If you're not interested in that, scroll down until you start to see pictures.

I'm pretty much a huge nerd, so I spazzed a little when I was at the library and saw that they had an Alton Brown cookbook. I lugged that heavy damn book home in a tiny backpack, while riding a bicycle.

So, while browsing the recipes, I rediscovered that, hey, this guy's a nerd, he weighs out his ingredients. Seeing as we didn't have a small food scale, I was a bit disappointed (part of that magnified by my lovely once monthly mood swings) but I was disappointed nonetheless. Here were all these great sounding recipes that I wouldn't be able to follow because I didn't have a scale. This is convenient, at a time when I will be broke until payday (in a week), need to make 50 dollar payments on two different bills, and need to put money into my savings account ASAP, because you're supposed to have a minimum of 100 dollars in there and I only have half that. So I only had like 3 bucks on me, and some 5 dollars in quarters, and a bit of random change.

Being as it was after 6pm, and I didn't want to drive to the next town, as I had very little gas in my car (and needed to conserve what I had to get to work), I hit up the hardware store in town. I had to search around for a while but eventually I ran across a small food scale for $9.99. This was also convenient because I counted out all my money (twice!) and I only had about $9.50. So I got angry with myself. Not only had I just fallen short, but I'd wasted the gas to drive to the hardware store.

Desperate, I went out to my car and rooted around in the car for change. The foodie gods were smiling down upon me because I found little over a dollar in change. It hit me that I am such a huge nerd that I went scrounging around for change in my car so I could buy a food scale, so I could make recipes in an Alton Brown cookbook.

I was very apologetic to the poor cashier who had to deal with me (having been there myself) but she was extremely nice and patient, so thanks, whoever was working at the Clear Lake Ace hardware last night.

Naturally, the whole scrounging for change situation amused me, so when I got home I naturally did the first thing one would do in that situation. I tweeted about it and tagged Alton Brown's twitter page in said tweet.

Cue more spazzing. I have often tagged celebrities in tweets, knowing full well they get way too many to have a ghost chance in hell of my tweet even being seen by them, let alone replied to. I'm actually still grinning, re-reading that just now.

I decided that even though it was getting a bit late in the evening (cue the Paul Simon song) I was depressed, and when I am in a certain kind of depression, the only way I can cheer myself up is to busy myself with cooking something. I had wanted to make some sort of sweet, and not wanting to fiddle with cupcakes I decided on a devil's food cake recipe. Click on this sentence to get the full size photo. I got lazy and didn't want to type the whole thing out.

Being as we don't have any of those fancy contraptions that hold your cookbook open for you...

This amused me for some reason. Probably because I was caffeinated and I was making a chocolate cake at 9pm

Now, right off the bat, I have never greased a pan and then put parchment paper in. I thought that's what the parchment paper was for, but I trust him so I did it anyway.

At this point I thought it prudent to include a photo of the little cheap food scale that could.

Obviously I hadn't zeroed the thing out yet

It was then that I figured out why people who weigh their ingredients have them all put into little bowls before hand on cooking shows, so while I waited for the water to boil I dumped the cocoa into a bowl.

I then decided to be suchly prepared and put the brown sugar in another bowl. The recipe called for dark brown sugar but I went with what we had, which was the normal stuff.

To tell the truth I was a bit alarmed weighing my ingredients at first. Having used measuring cups my entire life, it was a little strange.

At this point the water was boiling, so I set about whisking the cocoa and water together. 

In which looks are deceiving and it doesn't taste as delicious as it looks. I remembered this as I dripped a bit on my hand and had the bright idea of licking said drip off.

Back to the brown sugar bowl. I set about adding the other dry ingredients (the flours, the baking soda, and salt). Now here's where I deviated a bit. We don't have cake flour. And circumstances being what they were, with me being broke and the nearest open store being 15 minutes away, I went with the regular all purpose flour.

The recipe talks about a stand mixer. We are not fortunate enough to own one of those, and considering that my parents were trying to sleep (and our hand mixer is quite noisy), I sucked it up and used a rubber spatula and old fashioned elbow grease.

Now for measuring out the oil. 

To be honest, it alarmed a little. An entire cup seemed like a lot, but I figured, what the hell. It's a chocolate cake, not health food.

The recipe calls for sour cream. We had barely a tablespoon left in the fridge. After 9pm, making a chocolate cake to cheer myself up, my thought process went "We don't have enough sour cream, so I'll add a mashed banana".

In hindsight, the applesauce in the fridge would have made a better wet ingredient replacement

I added the eggs, and the egg yolks, but I didn't make it a point to snap a photo.

The next bit, step 5? Again, since we aren't fortunate enough to own a stand mixer, cue a whisk and more elbow grease. 

I was a bit worried that the lumpy banana bits wouldn't smooth out enough, but they did.

So the hard part is over. I poured the mix into the pan and set the timer for 30 minutes while I set about cleaning up the huge mess I made.

I had to change the water twice after this.

Naturally, the cake wasn't completely done after 30 minutes, but it was close enough that I put the cake back in the oven. I turned the oven off, but I set the timer for 5 minutes. I figured the residual heat would be fine, since the cake was so close to being done.

I feel like you should know how much self control it took not to just dive right into this boiling hot cake.

I set the alarm on my phone for half an hour (as the recipe calls for the cake to cool in the pan) and messed about on the internet.

I came back after half an hour and decided I wouldn't end up frosting the cake, so I cut it into pieces like brownies and put them in a container. I should note that at this point it was still fairly warm, so I didn't yet put the lid on. Didn't want the condensation to form and drip all over the cake.

Still, I couldn't contain myself and decided to try a piece for myself. Being as it was well past 10pm, I decided to forgo frosting and decided to put on some whipped topping, and to slice a few of the very ripe strawberries we had in the fridge.

I would love to reproduce this kind of scenario in the day time, when I've got the sunlight to work with

The cake is to die for. It's so rich that to be honest I'm not sure I want to slather it up with a bunch of sugary frosting. I liked it really well just with whipped topping and strawberries. In fact, I liked it so much that I'm thinking I should have waited until after lunch to put this blog entry together, because it's making me damn hungry.

So there goes my first foray into an Alton Brown cookbook. I can say with a great amount of certainty this is only the first of the recipes from this book that I am anxious to get made. I've made cakes from scratch before so for the next recipe I choose, I intend to step out of my comfort zone a little