Chocolate Stout Cake – Great British Baking Show

The latest season has begun. We originally were late to the party on this show, thought it was silly, and then one year at a friend’s house we were introduced and have never looked back.

Some of the earlier seasons it was definitely a thing to try and bake some of the offerings. They were interesting, fun and nice to share with neighbors. As the seasons progressed they become less interesting, and some were super obscenely complicated.

This season started with a bang, with a new host – Nigella – and they were talking about a chocolate guiness cake, and i was instantly intrigued!

Since it was all in the metric system (why can’t we all just get along and have a single way to measure things, i’m happy to take the hit to metric if we need to). Some of the measurements might be slightly different, but the result was just fine!

My set of spring pans is a hand me down from my mom (8.5,9.5 and 10), so the request of a 9inch spring pan lead to alot of angst of going bigger or going smaller. We settled on bigger – which then lead to issues of cooling and storage… 9.5 inch cake is huge y’all!

I had a stout, not a guiness, and it was a cherry stout, so i was king of excited… sadly none of the flavors soaked thru, but it was still delicous!

There was a ridiculous moment when i had the frosting mostly done and realized i didn’t have enough powdered sugar! half the ingredients were whipped to peaks and then i had to run out of the house!

Chocolate Stout Cake

adaptation from Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 45 minutes mins

Servings: 12 slices

Course: Dessert

Ingredients Equipment Method

Ingredients

  

For the Cake

• 1 cup Guinness
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
• ¾ cup cocoa powder
• 2 cups fine granulated sugar
• ⅔ cup sour cream
• 2 large eggs
• 2½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2¼ cups all-purpose flour
• 2½ teaspoons baking soda

For the Topping

• 10½ oz cream cheese (fat free or regular) about 1¼ cups
• 1¼ cups powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• ½ cup heavy cream or whipping cream (dairy free works well)

Equipment

• 1 Spring Pan near the 9 inch size
• 1 Hand mixer
• 1 medium size pot

Method

 

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 50ºF, and butter and line a 9.5 inch springform tin.
2. 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.
3. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan
4. Finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.
5. Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour.
6. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.
7. When the cake’s cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the icing.
8. Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and cornflour and then beat to combine.
9. Note:
10. If using double cream, add it and beat until you have a spreadable consistency.
11. If using whipping cream, whisk first to soft peaks, add a couple of spoonfuls into the cream cheese mixture and once this is combined, fold in the rest.
12. Ice the top of the black cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.

Verdict:

This was wonderful. There was way too much frosting, i would probably just get a can instead. I did use dairy free heavy cream since i had some left over from another recipe and it seems heavy cream is in demand whenever i got try to get it. I will say, i cannot tell the difference!

There was way too much frosting, I only put about half on the cake. When i gave it away I did offer a some extra frosting for the tasters to do with what they wished!

Try it, all the neighbors loved it!

Let me know what you think!