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Cakesmiths Vs Moor Beer

What could be a better collaboration than, an innovative award winning bakery and a forward thinking award winning brewery?

Cakesmiths is lucky to be positioned in the middle of the East Bristol Beer Trail. Terrible on a Friday afternoon after a hard day in the bakery! This positioning is very handy when selecting the right stout for our cake, I think they call it market research.

Stout cake is not a new thing, in fact it has been around since the 18th century. But what is new is the craft beer revolution. In Britain, we have always felt that having so many traditions was a good thing. But if you always create something by looking at how it has been done historically, you’ll probably never innovate. In America there were fewer established traditions for brewing, so instead microbreweries began experimenting and, guess what? They got better and better. The sheer breadth of interesting beers coming across from the US and most of Europe is now exponential.

Innovation is our mantra at Cakesmiths, in fact innovation and high quality ingredients form the very backbone of the Cakesmiths ethos. That in mind, it was very important for Mike our cake inventor to select the very finest stout.

Moor Beer Stout is conditioned with live yeast; unfined, unfiltered and unpasteurised made using only the fines malts an hop additions. Moor Beer share our ethos of working with only the world’s finest suppliers. Moor Beer use Tuckers Malting one of the world last remaining floor maltings. Moor also source hopps from all around the globe and also work with Charles Faram Hop Development creating new hop varieties like Jester.

So when invited to brew the stout for the cake we jumped at the chance to swap the bakery for the brewery!

The brewing process in theory is a simple process, there is an awful lot of cleaning involved, and stuff generally takes an hour. Hot water from a very large kettle (liquor tank) is mixed with malt in a huge vat (mash tun). In the mash tun the hot water is mixed with the malt and the water turns into a surgery malty liquid (the wort) It basically tasted like Ovaltine.

The next process is sparging - the wort is circulated, out of the mash tun at the bottom and back in to the top, so the malt forms a natural filter on a false floor so no bits get into the wort. Then once the wort runs clear the sparging take place. More hot water from the hot liquor tank is sprayed over the wort and the malt washing any remaining sugar out of the malt.

The wort is then pumped into the copper or boiler and then boiled as per recipe. Bittering hop can the added early in this stage if the recipe requires, towards the end of the boil the aroma hops are added.

The wort is then cooled moved to a fermenter and the yeast is pitched, and fermentation begins, depending on the recipe fermentation takes about 2 weeks and can be split between first and second fermentation in our case the second fermentation happens in the bottle or the can this is bottle or can conditioning. Very much layman's terms, but header brewer Tom spoke in much more depth about the secrets of Moor Beers process.

A few words from the Cake Inventor; This cake has been going strong for over 2 years now, with this being its third year! A favourite every time we make it and our founder Tom’s favourite cake when its about. A deep, dark and rich stout cake made with 70% belgian chocolate and buttermilk for a beautiful moist texture. We’ve partnered up with Moor Beer this year to make it with their wonderfully rich and delicious stout.

The dark malty flavours of the stout marry up perfectly with the dark chocolate used here in the cake, and topped off with a good portion of black treacle to give extra depth, the sponge of this cake really delivers a great rounded flavour, where the chocolate and stout balance each other wonderfully.

Top this all off with a creamy vanilla frosting ‘head’ made with real madagascan vanilla paste and you’ve got the cake version of a delicious smooth stout. We think this cake is fantastic as the nights start to creep back in and autumn begins to take a hold. The bold flavours really stand up to a lovely rich black coffee, or a smokey tea, but the creamy head makes a flat white work wonders with this one, especially if it's made with a dark roast!

So there you go! Chocolate Milk Stout Cake enjoy…