Everyone has a type of food they turn to when they want a bit of picking up, or if they feel sorry for themselves just want to indulge little bit. For a lot of people this tends to be chocolate in some form or another. For me it is chocolate cake. I know of few people who don’t enjoy a good chocolate cake.
Although chocolate cake is widely eaten, they can easily be quite mediocre (never bad though). Far too easily it can be too dry, or too rich. But, when you get a good chocolate cake you know it. Deep chocolate flavours, moist and rich.However, it is the accompanying flavours that really make a chocolate cake sing. Do you put a jam, like apricot or strawberry, in the middle? Do you use icing or a ganache? Failure to truly consider these can make a cake too rich. Yes, it is true, there is such a thing as a cake which is too rich.
when you get a good chocolate cake you know it
As far as I’m concerned, the best accompaniment to a moist chocolaty cake is a vanilla icing. I find it helps to accentuate a moist chocolate flavour.
Before I moved to the UK I ran a rowing club, and whenever I wanted to reward my fellow coaches I would bring them cake. I made a darn good chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache. However, for my wedding we had one of the layers of our wedding cake be a chocolate Guinness cake. I had never had it before, but it was delicious. So, I’ve re-created it.
After much searching I found various versions of the cake, including from the classic Nigella. Ultimately I made some changes/additions based on my taste, just to try and match my amazing wedding cake (which we got from here in case you are curious). The icing is distinctive, and really helps to match the Guinness both in look and taste. Enjoy, preferably with the rest of the Guinness.
Guinness Chocolate Cake
Guinness Chocolate Cake recipe
Ingredients
- • 250 ml guinness
- • 250g butter at room temperature.
- • 75g cocoa powder
- • 400g granulated sugar
- • 125ml sour cream
- • 2 large eggs
- • 1 Tbs vanilla extract
- • 275g plain flour sifted
- • 2 ½ tsp baking soda
- • 50 ml espresso shot
- • 300 grams cream cheese
- • 150 grams icing sugar
- • 100 ml double cream
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and prepare a 9 inch springform pan.
- Cream the butter and sugar.
- Shift the coco to remove lumps, and mix with the espresso shots and vanilla to form of chocolate paste. Add to the butter/sugar mixture and combine.
- Add the Guinness, eggs and sour cream, and blend.
- Finally, slowly add the sifted flour and baking soda and pour into the pan.
- Bake in the oven for around 45min. Leave to cool, it will be damp. When cool, place onto your plate to ice.
- For the icing, whip the cream cheese and gradually add the icing sugar until there are no lumps. Slowly add the cream to make it smooth and easy to spread. Ice the cake, drink the remainder of the Guinness and enjoy with cake.
Guinness cake is amazing. Fact.