Chocolate Guinness Cake

I had meant to make a Guinness cake for St Patrick's Day but I did not have sour cream in the fridge then. Planned abandoned but I really would love to try one so I made a Chocolate Guinness Cake over the weekend. I googled and found this recipe, yes yes it's Nigella Lawson's. I have some reservation with her recipes as some of them doesn't work as well as I would love them to. Anyway, I did more snooping here and there and found this recipe seems to be safe. I know SC Khoo would be jumping up and down on his seat now heh :p

This is a relatively simple cake to make, no need mixer at all! Loved the Guinness smell that drifted out from the oven during baking! However there is only a verly slight hint of the bitter stout in the cake, I guess it's safe for kids... BoiBoi had 2 pieces and so far still sober :p heh. The texture of this cake is extremely moist and the colour is almost black, perfect with the cream cheese icing which looked like the creamy froth of a perfect pint.

Chocolate Guinness Cake
Adapted from Nigella Lawson's

Ingredients
For the cake:
250ml Guinness stout
250g unsalted butter, sliced (I've used 225g)
75g cocoa
400g caster sugar (reduced to 350g)
140ml sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2 1/2teaspoons bicarbonate of soda/baking soda

For the icing:
300g Philadelphia cream cheese (I've used a 250g block which is more than enough)
150g icing sugar (adjusted to 100g)
125ml double or whipping cream

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin.

2. Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter and heat until the butter’s melted. Remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the mixture in the saucepan and finally whisk in the flour and baking soda.

3. Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.

4. 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.

5. 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. I sprinkled in cocoa powder all over for a bit of colour.