Recipe - Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake

Here's the recipe for the Guinness Cake I made for our Boozy Bakes event.

Ingredients:

• 250ml Guinness
• 250g unsalted butter
• 75g cocoa
• 400g caster sugar
• 142ml sour cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
• 275g plain flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• 300g Philadelphia cream cheese
• 125ml double or whipping cream

 Method:

• Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin.
• Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter – in spoons or slices – and heat until the butter’s melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.

• 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.
• 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. Or do this in a processor, putting the unsieved icing sugar in first and blitz to remove lumps before adding the cheese.
• 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 made it exactly as stated (I used the food processor technique for the icing, so much quicker, easier AND I didn’t end up covered in icing sugar like usual!), it needed the full hour in my oven and was cooked perfectly.  The edge was slightly crispy which I love but the whole cake was moist – not dry at the edges like some cakes I’ve baked before!  I highly recommend it!