Chocolate Guinness Cake

By popular demand, here is the recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake. Enjoy, and please remember to drink responsibly and not let your kitchen explode in a ball of flame after 20 too many Guinness.

Credit goes to Nigella Lawson, it’s *her* recipe after all. Plus I enjoy watching Nigella Bites on a Sunday while in my jammies, before lunch. It’s almost like porn, the way she expertly handles kitchen utensils and savours every morsel of her food. She uses OODLES OF NOODLES of BUTTER, love!!!!

Ahem.Recipe below. I know it calls for 250ml of Guinness, but since the tins in Malaysia are sold in 320ml, guess what happened to the 70+ml?

I poured it in.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat? It was all foamy when I poured it in the measuring cup [there goes 2 years of bartending], so I thought “Foam = air. Hence, + more Guinness”. I didn’t say I was a Math major. In fact, I majorly suck at Math.

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE CAKE

250ml Guinness

250g unsalted butter [I used some Irish butter as it was RM3 cheaper than Lurpack at RM10 per pop, ACK!]

75g cocoa

400g caster sugar

1 x 142ml pot sour cream

2 eggs

1 tablespoon real vanilla extract [Can’t get *real* vanilla extract here, so I substituted with vanilla flavouring 😦 ]

275g plain flour

2 1/2teaspoons bicarbonate of soda [also known as Soda Bicarbonate]

FOR THE TOPPING

300g Philadelphia cream cheese

150g icing sugar

125ml double or whipping cream

Serving Size : Makes about 12 slices

METHOD

1.	Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin.
2.	Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter – in spoons or slices – 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.
3.	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.
4.	When the cake’s cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the icing. Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and then beat them both together. Or do this in a processor, putting the unsieved icing sugar in first and blitz to remove lumps before adding the cheese.
5.	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. Or you can use TheDancingJ’s recipe for frosting : I used cream cheese frosting for mine, and whipped a few tablespoons of Guinness into it until it was the color of the head of foam that you get on a mug of beer… made them REALLY look like Guinness cupcakes and tasted AWESOME. Now go forth and happy baking! 😀 M*