Chocolate Guinness Cake
Fiona Staunton • Mar 15, 2020
A celebration cake for any time of the year
St Patricks Day is a day for celebration, celebrating all things Irish. I am not into making food green for the day but I certainly enjoy the treat of this amazing Chocolate Guinness, why don't you give it a go?
This is my favourite chocolate cake, and everyone in my house loves it. It is lovely and light, not only does it resemble the now famous Irish stout that can be found all over the world but it actually has some Guinness inside it! It also has lots of sugar to counteract the bitterness of the Guinness. I got this recipe originally from Nigella Lawson.
Ingredients
Makes 12 slices
For the cake:
250ml Guinness
250g butter
75g cocoa powder
400g caster sugar
140ml sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
For the topping
300g cream cheese
150g icing sugar
125ml double cream
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and butter and line a 23cm springform tin.
- Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter and heat until the butter's melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar.
- Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.
- Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.
- When the cake's cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand.
- For the icing, place the sugar in a food processor and blitz to remove lumps before adding the cheese.
- Add the cream and beat again until it makes a spreadable consistency.
- Ice the top of the black cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.
Variations:
I often make cupcakes with the mixture, they tend to cook in 20 mins. Often, the the guiness can and sour cream containers are bigger than what is needed here, I make 1.5 times the mixture and make one cake and 9-12 cup cakes and I just simply use a little less icing on the cake so I can top each cupcake.
Serving:
Only put the icing on shortly before you need it. As it has fresh cream in it, it will need to be stored in the fridge but the cake does better out of the fridge. Serve in slices as a dessert or with a cup of tea. It is a very moist cake.
Storage:
If the cake lasts more than 6 hours I would tend to keep it in the fridge!
