Guinness and chocolate cake

I’ve been making a lot of cakes with fruit of late but fancied something rich, dark and chocolaty this weekend.  This cake ticked the boxes and the cream cheese frosting was a bonus!

The frosting is supposed to represent the head on a pint of Guinness.  I cannot drink Guinness, it makes my mouth pucker in a way Mr CC finds endlessly amusing.  Indeed, one of his favourite past times is egging me on to try a drink of his whilst promising, ‘honestly, it’s not that bitter’, just so he can see that face.  Quite why anyone wants to drink something that tastes like iron filings is beyond me – but – in a cake, with lots of sugar to temper the bitterness, it works really well.

Several of my eaters didn’t fancy this cake from the description but were amazed at how much they liked it.  It is the richest, most intense chocolate cake and you wouldn’t know it had Guinness in, but you would wonder why the chocolate was so much more satisfying than a normal chocolate cake.

I suppose I should say that this cake is really rich and small slices will suffice....but really?  When was a cake ever so good that you only wanted a small piece of it?  Does. Not. Compute.

Ingredients

For the cake:
250ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa powder
400g caster sugar
142ml sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2 ½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

For the frosting:
300g cream cheese – I used Philadelphia
150g icing sugar
125ml double cream

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

Line a 20cm round springform tin with baking paper.

Place the Guinness and butter into a saucepan and gently melt together, stirring occasionally.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the cocoa and sugar.

In a separate bowl beat together the sour cream and eggs, then stir into the butter mix.

Stir in the vanilla, flour and bicarbonate of soda.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for approximately 45 minutes – 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Leave to cool, in the tin, on a wire rack.  Don’t panic if it sinks a little on cooling – it’s a rich, squidgy cake!

Now make the topping: whisk the cream cheese until soft and smooth.

Add the icing sugar and beat it into the cream cheese.

Add the cream and beat again.

Spoon over the cake so that it looks like the head on a pint of Guinness.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.