Guinness Cake

With St Patrick's day having just passed, we celebrated in the office yesterday at lunch time with some of the Irish folk in the office having prepared a few bits and pieces to eat - from Irish soda bread, to Taytos and so on.

As I mentioned in the last blog, I'd told a couple of lassies from work about the Guinness cake I'd come across on Miss Piggy's website, trying to convince them to get one for the Paddy's day celebrations. Instead, I was asked to make one - and of course I obliged.

I was initially thinking of modifying a coca cola cake recipe, but having had a wee look on the internet, I came across a Nigella recipe for Guinness cake... So I settled for that.

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In accordance with Nigella's recipe, you will need:

- 2/3 can of Guinness

- 250g unsalted butter

- 75g cocoa

- 400g caster sugar

- 140ml sour cream

- 2 eggs

- 1tbsp vanilla extract

- 275g plain flour

- 2tsp bicarbonate of soda

- 300g cream cheese

- 150g icing sugar

- 125ml double cream

I should set the scene here - I was round at Luke's to bake the cake - anyone from work will know that this sounds like disaster. I can report though, that my Kiwi / Geordie pal is more than competent in the kitchen. He just needs to stretch those cooking wings...

This is also a particularly expensive cake to make due to the Guinness in it. Though I would have saved a few pounds if the shop had sold individual cans... Luke has three to enjoy when Lent is over.

Starting off then, get your Guinness into a large pot and crank up the heat while you preheat the oven to 180°C. Once the Guinness is starting to bubble, add in the butter a bit at a time, melting thoroughly through and constantly stirring.

It should be noted that as well as being expensive, this is a very fattening cake - with a whole block of butter, a lot of sour cream, cream and two cartons of cream cheese going into it... Steer well clear if you're on a diet!

Once the butter's all melted, whisk in the sugar and cocoa. Follow this with the sour cream, eggs and vanilla.

I specified a large pot earlier, because when Luke and I got round to adding the bicarbonate of soda and the flour (which is the next step), the mixture started to rise very quickly and overflow. We took the pot off the heat and poured the cake batter into a big mixing bowl to finish whisking it all together.

After your batter is lump free and ready to go, grease up a ten inch spring form cake tin and bake it in the oven. Nigella says that 45 minutes is enough, but it was more like an hour and a half before it was ready.

Luke agreed to keep the cake overnight so that I could go home without having to carry it for two miles. It was brought into work the next day for icing.

Simply beat the cream cheese, double cream and icing sugar together until you have a fairly thick set icing to use on the top of the cake. The idea is that you spread it to look like the top of a pint of Guinness... mine didn't exactly turn out that way, but it was still delicious!

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Coming up:

- Not sure.