Chocolate Guinness Cake

I celebrated my 19th birthday a few years ago with a BBQ party at home with all of my best pals, neighbours and family friends. At the time I'd just started to seriously enjoy baking, so used my birthday as the perfect opportunity to make a huge selection of bakes from The Hummingbird Bakery book, Cake Days. I planned out the couple of days before the party with military precision and spent them hiding in the kitchen from dawn till dusk so that for the party there was a table of cakes, cookies, tarts and whoopie pies for everyone to enjoy. Of everything I made, this is the cake that had the most compliments, and the one that I still have people asking me for the recipe literally years later. Well, here it is...

Fans of chocolate, rejoice, as this cake will be utter heaven for you, and in a not entirely coincidental turn of events it contains Guinness, so it's pretty appropriate for St Patrick's Day tomorrow!

Whether you're just in the mood for cake, or if you need/ want to make something themed for St Patrick's Day then you can't go wrong with this Chocolate Guinness Cake topped with a cream cheese frosting. Delicious doesn't even cover it.

The original recipe can be found in The Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days (which I'd massively recommend buying!) but it's also below with my notes and photographs, as usual.

Ingredients:

For the sponge:
250ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
80g cocoa powder
400g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
140ml buttermilk
280g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

For the frosting:
50g unsalted butter, softened
300g icing sugar
125g full-fat cream cheese (such as Philadelphia, currently on offer in Morrisons!)
Cocoa powder, for dusting



Method:

Preheat the oven to 170C / 325F / Gas Mark 3, and line the base of a 23cm spring-form cake tin with baking parchment.

Pour the Guinness into a large saucepan (you will add most of the ingredients to this so make sure it's big enough to mix everything: I misjudged the size and had a tense time trying not to spill the mixture everywhere...). Add the butter and gently heat until it has melted.

Remove from the heat and stir in the cocoa powder and sugar into the warm liquid. Gently mix to remove all of the lumps.

Mix together the eggs, vanilla essence and buttermilk by hand in a jug.

Add this to the mixture in the pan (see: dangerously full saucepan...).

Sift the remaining sponge ingredients into a large bowl or freestanding electric mixer. Using the paddle attachment (or a hand-held whisk) pour the contents of the pan onto the dry ingredients and mix. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and continue to mix thoroughly until all the ingredients are incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until the sponge bounces back when lightly pressed and a skewer comes out clean.

I don't trust spring-form tins at all (I have the worst luck and they always seem to leak mixture all over the oven...) so I placed mine on a tray first to avoid disaster. I'd definitely recommend this just in case!

Set the cake aside to cool in the tin.

Once warm and a little firmer to touch, remove and place on a wire rack to cool completely. It should technically escape from the tin easily, but you're worried gently run a palette knife around the outside edge of the cake while it's warm to ease any stubborn parts away from the edges - that way it should be easier to remove when cold.

While the sponge is cooling make the frosting. Using an electric whisk or a free-standing electric mixer with a paddle attachment, mix the butter and icing sugar together until there are no large lumps of butter and it has a sandy consistency.

Add the cream cheese and beat until the frosting is smooth, light and fluffy. If the sponge is still pretty warm at this stage then leave the frosting in the fridge until ready to use.

Place the cooled cake on to a plate or serving stand. If the top of yours domed like mine then carefully trim the top with a sharp knife until it's flat and neater. Don't worry about any cracks: they'll be covered in frosting in no time!

The original recipe now says to cover the whole cake with frosting, but I think it works best if you just top the sponge generously with the cream cheese frosting, leaving the sides naked. Apply a thin crumb layer first, then build up the frosting in layers. This keeps the bright white frosting neat and crumb free.

Dust the top with cocoa powder and serve!

If it's all gone to plan then you should be left with a rich, dark chocolate sponge topped with a bright white cream cheese frosting - the contrasting colours work wonderfully, so feel free to leave off the dusting of cocoa powder if you'd prefer in order to ensure a bolder impact.

Remember Bruce Bogtrotter's cake in Matilda? It was gooey, fudgey, decadent and every child's dream chocolate cake. Well this is the adult version of that: it's just as rich, sweet and moist as it looks and it's enormous! Don't worry though: Miss Trunchball won't on hand to force you to eat it all in one sitting, but I'm sure no-one (except your waistline) would judge you if you did...

You can't really taste the Guinness - it's there to ensure the sponge is super moist, and it does its job beautifully!

The cream cheese frosting stops the chocolate from being too overpowering. I think it looks best with just a thick layer on the top, but in the future I'll double the quantity of frosting if I want to cover the edges too.

So, what do you think?!

Will you be venturing to the pub tomorrow or staying in and indulging in a slice of this Chocolate Guinness Cake? Do let me know of your St Patrick's Day plans in the comments below, as well as any of your favourite Irish recipes!