Chocolate Guinness Cake

This very indulgent cake has been made a few times in the Keston Kitchen to mark special occasions and I have intended to post the recipe for ages. It being St Patrick's day and the key ingredient being Guinness, I thought it was appropriate that I finally got round to writing about it today.
We have tried out other Guinness cake recipes which have also worked well but this Nigella version is the easiest (and definitely the naughtiest - the amount of sugar in this recipe is outrageous!).
The creamy icing is delicious and when spread on top of the dark rich cake it completes the cake like the head on a pint of Guinness.

Most recently I made this cake last week, it was Pierre's birthday (Keston Kitchen calendar photographer). We arrived at the pub in Camberwell where the festivities were taking place to find that he already had one chocolate birthday cake (and a selection of novelty moustaches which his guests were sporting)! We lit the candles on both cakes and everyone tucked in.
I think the Guinness cake was well received as I returned home with an empty plate.
This recipe is great if you are looking for a rich, moist chocolate cake, I have to say you can't really taste the Guinness but we have never had any complaints from its recipients!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Rachael xx

Ingredients for the cake:
250ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa powder
400g caster sugar
142ml sour cream
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the icing:
300g cream cheese
150g icing sugar
125ml double cream or whipping cream



Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 180C and line a 23cm round cake tin with baking parchment (grease the paper with a little butter).
Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter in pieces and heat until the butter has melted. Then, whisk in the sugar and cocoa powder.
In a separate bowl beat the eggs with the sour cream and vanilla extract and then add it to the rest of the mixture in the pan.
Finally mix in the flour and bicarbonate of soda, a bit at a time (you may need to decant the mixture into a bowl before adding the flour if you pan is not big enough).
Pour the cake batter into the lined and greased tin and bake in the oven for 45-60 minutes (mine took a good hour). Once cooked (a skewer comes out clean from the centre of the cake), leave it to cool in its tin. Because it is such a sticky, damp cake don't try and take it out of the tin too soon as it may not stay in one piece.
To make the icing, put the cream cheese in a bowl and stir in until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and mix them together. Then add the cream and beat until it thickens into a spreadable consistency. Once the cake is cool, cover the top with the icing.

Posted in: Festive Foods,Midnight baking