Tags
Cake, cream cheese, Guinness, Guinness cake, icing, irish food blog, kitchen feasts, Nigella Lawson
A while ago (looking back it is probably years ago), someone mentioned Guinness cake to me. And well I thought to myself ‘yuck’. I couldn’t imagine the cake being delicious or even pleasant for that matter. Don’t get me wrong, I like Guinness but just couldn’t imagine a cake made with it. Well about 6 weeks ago, a friend that I work with mentioned it and told me I had to make it. I started to look at recipes for it and kinda hummed and hawed to myself about trying it and then last weekend things fell into place and I was organised and quite excited about it so while Alexander had his afternoon nap, I got to work on this cake.
I didn’t even dare adapt a recipe as it seemed too complicated to dabble with, so I followed our favourite domestic goddess’ (Nigella Lawson) recipe, and while during the making of this I was very sceptical, in the end, I had made hands down one of the best chocolate cakes I have ever made.
Oh my god, is this cake worth every calorie and quite simply delicious! There is a LOT of sugar in this cake but it balances out the maltyness of the Guinness to perfection. The cake has depth and a fabulous lingering flavour. And I just had to share this recipe with you.
You will have to excuse my photography though. While I am finding time to bake, I have less time to photograph. And I thought I might have ample time to photograph slices of this being dished out, it was scoffed so quickly that, that just didn’t happen. Which is no complaint in my book.
If you have ever been in two minds about Guinness cake, don’t be. Just make it, like tomorrow!
NIGELLA LAWSON’S GUINNESS CAKE
Pop over to Nigella’s page here and have a look for yourself, but the recipe is posted below for ease (in Nigella’s words, but with my images)
For the cake:
- 250 millilitres guinness
- 250 grams unsalted butter
- 75 grams cocoa powder
- 400 grams caster sugar
- 142 millilitres sour cream
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 275 grams plain flour
- 2½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
For the icing:
- 300 grams cream cheese
- 150 grams icing sugar
- 125 millilitres double cream (or whipping cream)
THE HOW
Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C/350ºF, and butter and line a 23cm / 9 inch springform tin. ( I actually found that my tin was too shallow (2.5 inches), so use a very deep tin or two smaller tins and reduce cooking time by about 10 minutes)
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.
Pour the cake batter (it is very liquidy so don’t panic) into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour (I cooked mine for 40 minutes) . 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 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.
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.
