Chocolate Guinness Cake

Oh my god. You have no idea. This is the best cake! There was a thing I said about some pork chops that I made, how I would never need to try another way because I had found the absolute best recipe. Well, this is my chocolate cake. I will never need to bother with another chocolate cake again. It can get no better then this.



For the cake:
250ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa
400g caster sugar
142ml pot of sour cream
2 eggs
1tbsp vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2&1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For topping
300g Philadelphia Cream cheese
150g icing sugar (powdered)
125ml double or whipping cream

Preheat to 180c/350f

Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter in spoons or slices, and heat until the butter is melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla, and pour into the Guinness mixture, and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.
Pour the batter into a greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely on a cooling rack, as it’s quite a damp cake.
When the cake is cold, make the icing. Whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar then beat them both together. Or do this in a food processor, putting the unsieved sugar in first and blitzing to remove any lumps before adding the cream cheese. Add the cream and beat again until it is a spreadable consistency. Ice the top of the cake so that it looks like a frothy pint.



On St. Patrick’s day we bought some Guinness to have with our Dinner, and we didn’t finish it, so in looking for something to do with it, I found this recipe in the Nigella Lawson book “Feast”. One thing I should mention is that when you are making the frosting be sure to add the cream a little at a time. You may not need all of it. I added mine all at once and had to adjust because it was way too runny.

You don’t actually taste the Guiness, but it adds a heartiness to the cake that is kind of hard to describe. It’s like it makes it substantial as opposed to just sweet. That plus the contrast of the cream cheese frosting make this the kind of cake that you could just keep eating and eating. Also, it’s fun to melt butter in beer.

Many people will be fed this cake. That will be my mission.