Odd Cakes

I'm visiting relatives this weekend, and was offered a taste of chocolate cake by someone who loves Marmite. As a person who is also not indifferent to Marmite in a positive direction, I was impressed by the deliciousness and nice Marmitey aftertaste. I found a recipe for a Marmite based cupcake, involving peanut butter, here, which are also topped with peanut butter.

It reminded me of a couple of other kinds of chocolate cake I have heard of/seen made which contain unexpected ingredients.

• Chocolate Guinness Cake
  
  It's possible to bake half a can of Guinness into a chocolate cake, and it still tastes pretty much like normal chocolate cake. I think you might need a little more sugar than usual to counteract the bitterness of the stout. You can also put some in the icing, if you make it carefully with icing sugar. This recipe by Nigella just has a plain cream cheese style icing, which I imagine works just as well.
  
  
  
  http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/chocolate-guinness-cake-3086


• Courgette Chocolate Cake
  
  In the same way carrot cake manages to involve a grated vegetable without being in any way at all wrong, it's also possible to secrete an entire courgette (also grated, don't be silly) in a chocolate cake. I believe it results in a lovely moist cake which doesn't actually taste like it's got a courgette in it. I imagine it's good for getting kids to eat veg, although as someone who has a serious love of courgettes anyway, that's unnecessary for me. This recipe from BBC Good Food looks awesome, and also incorporates mixed spice which sounds even lovelier.
  
  
  
  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/633634/chocolate-courgette-cake


• Some other ones which I haven't had much experience of but which I have found recipes for:
  
  Tomato Soup cake
  Chocolate mayonnaise cake
  
  Also worth a mention is Red velvet cake, which is commonly coloured using beetroot, and is proper well red and that.

So, hopefully you've not been sick yet at the thought of such strange combinations. If you do try making any of these, let me know how it goes. I'm inspired/tempted to make a carrot cake, once I have a bit more free time.

I bet Tim Vine would have a fit.

EDIT: Just found a recipe on Smitten Kitchen, one of my favourite recipe blogs, for Red Wine Chocolate Cake. It apparently tastes just nicely of red wine, but it works best as a thin cake - not too tall, giving smallish portions - and goes well with a nice mascarpone cream.