Monday, October 22, 2007

Chocolate Guinness Cake


Yesterday was a double celebration. Firstly it was my brother Rob’s birthday & secondly Michael & I bought a new house in Brunswick so I was very, very excited as you can imagine. To celebrate the birthday I decided on Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake from Feast as it sounded very manly & to celebrate the house purchase I had just the tiniest bit of bubbly! The cake was excellent, firstly it was huge, rising quite high, it was also lovely & moist. You couldn’t taste the Guinness itself though I suspect it was what gave this cake its lovely velvety smooth taste along with the whole pack of butter. The cream cheese icing topped it off perfectly. As for the bubbles, I am dreaming of the day when I can celebrate something with a whole bottle (or 2!). 60 day settlement & then I can start on my dream garden though it will be the middle of summer so most of the planting might have to wait a season or so. When the gardens in then it will be lots of cooking of fresh herbs, veggies & fruit in my dream kitchen, which I also have to build/renovate along with half of the house. It will take a while but sure it will all be worth it & in the meantime better start packing

Chocolate Guinness Cake

Cake:
250ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa
400g caster sugar
142ml sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2 ½ teaspoons bicarb of soda

Icing:
300g Philadelphia cream cheese
150g icing sugar
125ml double of whipping cream

Preheat the oven to 180c. Butter & line a 23cm springform tin.

Pour the Guinness in a large wide saucepan, add the butter in slices & heat until the butter is melted, whisk in the cocoa & sugar. Beat the sour cream with eggs & vanilla & then pour into the mixture & then whisk in the flour & bicarb.

Pour the batter into the tin & bake for 45 mins to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack before turning out. When the cake is cold make the icing. Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth then sieve over the icing sugar & then beat together. Or do it in a processor, putting the icing sugar in first, blitzing to remove lumps then add cheese. Add the cream & beat again until the mix is a spreadable consistency. Ice the cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.

10 comments:

Vida said...

Congratulations on the house AND cake, it looks devine, I will have to try that recipe... Vida x

Kat said...

Congrats!! How exciting for you. And the cake- looks fantastic.

Rosie said...

Congrats ange on your new house :)

You made a wonderful job of this cake!! I've baked this one too before and I agree its a huge hit.

Good luck with your new garden and happy planting.

Rosie x

Kiki said...

Amazing news on the purchase of your new house, even better that it's in Brunswick :-)

This cake looks amazing, could you taste the Guinness within? I must pull out 'Feast' and see what Nigella wrote about this recipe.

Ange said...

thks for all of the congratulations

Kikimiss - give it a go it is fantastic & no you cant taste the guinness which is probably a good thing, i dont know if i want my cake to actually taste like beer

virtual chef said...

Hi Ange, love your Blog, and your cake...!

LBA said...

Brunswick's lovely, and yes, will always be on the up&up, so always astute buying, IMO.

Can't wait to see pics of this garden growing. Will there be much to do in the way of renos ?

Congrats !
:)

Ange said...

h&b, thks, as for renos a big extension/reno is on the cards but that will have tio wait a year or so til we can plan it properly & more important pay for it! Garden pics will be there as soon as something grows, meantime our settlement is 20 Dec so a nice xmas present for us

Janice said...

Isn't that the most fantastic cake! I made it for my DS1's 18th 3 years ago and have made it several times since, there is something about the tang of the guiness with the chocolate and it is so moist. Good luck with the house.

Janice

Lexi said...

I made this cake the other day - delicious! It was especially good because I found that I didn't need to use the mixmaster at all, I just hand mixed all of the ingredients and it worked out awesomely! Since the cake is so big, I ended up putting the mix into two tins, and they both rose really well, and were nice and moist. Thanks for posting the recipe!