The Cailleach’s Red Ale Cake

[Amethyst]

The Cailleach’s Red Ale Cake

This recipe is an excerpt from “Brigid’s Feast of Light: The Magical Foods of Imbolc”, an e-cookbook at Gather Victoria Patreon.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ cups brown sugar or granulated raw sugar
¾ cup cocoa powder sifted
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup of ale or beer
1/2 cup butter
1 cup buttermilk at room temperature
2 large eggs at room temperature
¾ cup of dried chamomile

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350F, grease, and dust a large bundt pan with cocoa powder.

Melt your butter on low heat. Add ¼ cup of dried chamomile, stir, and allow to gently warm for 20 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat. Sieve off the flowers, give them a good squeeze to release all of the butter, and set the butter aside. (If you don’t have 1/2 cup of butter remaining, just add a little more melted butter to top up)

Pour your ale into a small saucepan and heat until just simmering. Add ½ cup of dried chamomile and let it warm on the lowest heat for 10-15 minutes. Take the pan off the heat, sieve off the chamomile, and set aside.

Place flour, sugars, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. Stir to combine. In another bowl, whisk buttermilk, eggs, chamomile butter, and vanilla. Temper this mixture with the warm ale, adding a little at a time while whisking the egg mixture quickly. Add wet ingredients to dry and combine well.

Bake until a toothpick comes out mostly clean, approximately 35-40 mins.

Chocolate Ganache Topping

Ingredients:

1 cup dark or bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped.
1 ¼ cups heavy cream

Place in a large heat-proof bowl. Bring cream to a boil over medium-high heat; pour directly over chopped chocolate. Allow to sit for 10 minutes. Gently stir the chocolate and cream until well combined and smooth.

Notes:

In some folktales, the Cailleach keeps Brigid imprisoned (often in a mountainous tower) over the winter months. Each spring, Brigid escapes, and the Cailleach then turns into a large stone. This story seems to be writ large in the megalithic monuments of Ireland – many of which are reputed to have been created by the Cailleach herself! Passage tombs, cairns, and chambers at Carrowmore and Carrowkeel in County Sligo and the Mound of the Hostages found on the Hill of Tara in County Meath, feature alignments preceding and after the cross-quarter days of Imbolc (and Samhain). This means the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox- which falls this year on February 3rd or 4th (depending on where you live).

Recipe and information on The Cailleach courtesy of Gather Victoria.com