OH MY.
YUM. Thanks should be given to Nigella Lawson for being an astounding babe, and creating possibly the most sinful and naughty cake ever to exist. The damp, dark cocoa sits so well with the sweet white frosting, and the calorie count is enough to make you explode.
I have a whole cake just sat, making seductive, cream-cheesey eyes at me whenever I pass my kitchen work surface…it may be a calorific week.
Please enjoy… it would be impossible for you not to.
Chocolate Guinness Cake Recipe
This recipe makes a large cake!
Cake ingredients:
250ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa powder
400g caster sugar
142ml sour cream
2 large free-range eggs
2tsp vanilla extract (Nigella says 1tbsp, but I don’t think you need that much – as long as you have good quality vanilla)
275g plain flour
2 ½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
Topping ingredients:
300g cream cheese
150g icing sugar
125ml double cream
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180°C/gas mark 4, and line a 23cm spring-form cake tin with greaseproof paper (butter the sides).
In a wide, large pan (honestly, you’ll see), gently pour your Guinness, adding the butter in thin slices. On a moderate heat, stir until the butter’s melted. Then gently whisk in the cocoa and sugar.
Beat the sour cream with your eggs and vanilla until combined, and then pour this creamy whiteness into your cocoa-black beer mix. Mix. Then sieve-in the flour, and the bicarb (this is the moment when your mixture will begin an inexorable growth – mine became almost twice the size)!
Pour your batter into the cake tin, and bake. I checked it after 30 mins, but it took 40. Nigella suggests 45 to an hour. So trust yourself and remove depending on your oven, and depending on when a skewer comes out of the centre clean.
It’s a soggy cake, so let it cook down in its springform.
When it’s cold, get ready to ice. Whip the cream cheese up until it’s nice and smooth, and then sieve over the icing sugar, beating them together to get a lump free mix of joy. Add the double cream, and beat it until it firms up a little and looks spreadable. Then ice your cake – a pint of Guinness will triumphantly emerge, white frothy head on a devilish dark cake. Utterly, ridiculously good. x
