Spiced Beer Cake with Italian Meringue Buttercream

This cake is the first of my trial bakes to decide what to make for the Great Suffolk Bake Off.  The competition has a Suffolk theme so I am planning to use Suffolk ingredients (as my sugarcraft skills aren't up to creating a cake reincarnation of Southwold Pier) so local flour, butter, milk and eggs are in, but unfortunately coffee, chocolate and citrus are out.

For me the first obvious choice of Suffolk ingredient to try as a star ingredient was beer - according to Suffolk CAMRA the county has 27 breweries.  The limited choice of other ingredients did make the search for a potential recipe a little tricky but I was really inspired by the great recipe from Joy the Baker and the idea of a spiced Broadside cake from The Caked Crusader.  With a few tweaks the recipe for my cake is below:

Spiced beer cake with Italian meringue butter cream

For the cake

Ingredients 

2oz butter (I used lightly salted)
110 g golden caster sugar 
50g dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon each of mixed spice, ground ginger and nutmeg (these were the only suitable spices I had in the cupboard - I'm sure ground cloves, cinnamon or similar would work well)
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)
2 eggs
220g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
6 fluid oz beer - I used Adnams Southwold Bitter (this handily gives you a good sized glass of beer left).

Pre-heat the oven to 180 oC and line a 7 inch square or 8 inch round cake tin.

In a stand mixer or with an electric whisk beath together the butter, sugars and spices for 3 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.

Mix the flour and beer in to the butter/sugar mix, alternating between the two.

Pour the mix into the tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until a knife inserted into the middle come out clean.  Then it's on to...

The un-iced cake - would be great on it's own.

The Frosting

Since receiving my KitchenAid I have been itching to try making Italian meringue and this seemed like the perfect excuse.  I used a recipe from Cakelove who have a really handy video with very easy to follow instructions.

Pouring the sugar syrup in to the egg whites was horribly nerve wracking but it felt AMAZING when the egg whites stayed nice and thick and shiny.  The mixture did collapse a bit when I added the butter but it whipped up again quickly and you end up with absolutely loads (I have a full piping bags worth in the freezer).  This recipe calls for 1lb (1LB!) of butter - I'm trying not to think about how much of that I have already consumed.

The Result

The beer makes the cake really moist but it doesn't come across in the flavour as much as I would like.  Next time i'd like to try a beer with more citrussy hops to cut through some of the sweetness.  If I wasn't trying to use Suffolk ingredients I'd add the juice and zest of a lemon to add some freshness.  Husband loves the sweetness but it's a bit much for me.  Not the one for the bake off but worth repeating.