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Chocolate Guinness Cake
Updated May 1, 2024
![Chocolate Guinness Cake](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/03/15/multimedia/NL-Chocolate-Guiness-Cake1-gblf/NL-Chocolate-Guiness-Cake1-gblf-articleLarge.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
- Total Time
- 1 hour 15 minutes
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- Butter, for the pan
- 1cup Guinness stout
- 10tablespoons (1 stick plus 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter (see Tip)
- ¾cup unsweetened cocoa
- 2cups superfine sugar
- ¾cup sour cream
- 2large eggs
- 1tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2cups all-purpose flour
- 2½teaspoons baking soda
- 1¼cups confectioners' sugar
- 8ounces cream cheese at room temperature
- ½cup heavy cream
For the Cake
For the Topping
Preparation
- Step 1
For the cake: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch springform pan and line with parchment paper. In a large saucepan, combine Guinness and butter. Place over medium-low heat until butter melts, then remove from heat. Add cocoa and superfine sugar, and whisk to blend.
- Step 2
In a small bowl, combine sour cream, eggs and vanilla; mix well. Add to Guinness mixture. Add flour and baking soda, and whisk again until smooth. Pour into buttered pan, and bake until risen and firm, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Place pan on a wire rack and cool completely in pan.
- Step 3
For the topping: Using a food processor or by hand, mix confectioners' sugar to break up lumps. Add cream cheese and blend until smooth. Add heavy cream, and mix until smooth and spreadable.
- Step 4
Remove cake from pan and place on a platter or cake stand. Ice top of cake only, so that it resembles a frothy pint of Guinness.
- The recipe for this cake in Nigella Lawson's cookbook "Feast: Food to Celebrate Life" (Hyperion, 2004) calls for 18 tablespoons (2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
By volume, a 9" springform pan is 10 cups. You can use 2 "standard" 8" or 9" pans instead. Or make 18-24 cup cakes.
I used a 9" square pan and made 6 cupcakes as well (the 9" square has a volume of about 8 cups). I baked the cupcakes for about 25 minutes and the cake for 45.
Love this cake. I do think a little Bailey's in the frosting does wonders.
We make this cake one day in advance. It tastes better and it's a little more moist. We release the spring form after about an hour in the cooling process so the sides don't stick the next day. We prepare the frosting the day we plan to serve.
In a side by side taste test with my family of 19 tasters... this was a clear winner over the epicurious three layer Guinness cake.
It's better with 1) a half-teaspoon of kosher salt added to the dry ingredients, and 2) a better stout than Guinness - preferably a chocolate stout.
Made this cake for the folks. They loved it! Didn’t notice the Guinness in the cake, but I noticed there was leftover beer in the bottle, so it was a win for the cook.
Please list ingredients by weight, not by volume.
For those of you asking for weight. You can find it on Nigella's website
http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/chocolate-guinness-cake-3086
Made cake as stated. I used about 3 oz. of goat cheese in the topping in place of cream cheese. To accompany the cake I use a jar of Morrelo cherries simmered in a bit of sugar and ruby port. Served it on a plate and put the cake on top. It was a warm syrupy mixture that set off the deep chocolate cake. It was awesome and pretty.
This was superb and so easy to make! Not too sweet (I used ordinary sugar, not superfine, and didn't adjust quantity). Came out perfectly. Icing was easy too, and frosted beautifully. My husband loved the deep flavor of chocolate with a hint of bitterness. Looked gorgeous as well! Did I mention how easy it was to make? :)
I make this with the above-noted changes (salt, a better stout) in a Bundt pan, rather than a springform, and don't frost it at all. Dusting with a mix of confectioner's sugar and cocoa is all it needs, not a thick gloppy frosting.
I made it in Denver (5280', folks, if you had forgotten!) and it didn't fall! Changes:
9oz stout
6.25 oz sugar: 2cups minus 2T
10.25 oz flour: added 2T to the 2cups
2 tsp baking soda (not 2.5)
Baked at 375 (actually in my convection oven, 350 which is 375 in normal ovens) for 35 mins. I should have checked at 30 mins.
Also, I food-processed the sugar and cream cheese, then added the whipping cream just until I liked the texture.
Quite yummy
I made this recipe into cupcakes, adjusting the cooking time downwards and just using a cake tester to figure out when they were done. I also used the food processor to make superfine sugar out of white granulated sugar with no problems. The cupcakes were a hit!
I have made this over and over since it was first published and think it is the best in the world! Last one I used a cherry ale instead of Guinness. Also tossed in a coupla handfuls of frozen Bing cherries and added more chopped cherries to the frosting and a bit more powdered sugar to thicken. The cake was grand and gone in one day. I am going to keep experimenting with the recipe as my go-to base for chocolate cake.
My go-to chocolate cake, always wins raves. It's what I think a chocolate cake should be: intensely chocolate-y, not overly sweet, and fairly dense. Occasionally I save other chocolate cake recipes but then I think, "Why bother?"
And a few more notes on making and baking the cake:
I let the butter-Guinness-sugars-cocoa mixture cool to room temp before adding to batter.
After filling the pan, I rapped it on the counter a few times to shake out any air pockets.
I used an instant-read thermometer to check for doneness: 200 degrees F in center (don't start testing too early and deflate the cake).
Great cake. I found that room-temperature cream cheese came out thin (like a glaze). After binning the glaze/frosting, I found that an easy mascarpone Chantilly worked well. (1 3/4 cups heavy cream, 3/4 cup powdered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla paste. Beat to soft peaks. Add 8 ounces mascarpone and beat to stiff peaks.) The Chantilly holds better as well.
I had trouble with the frosting (it was totally liquid and had to add an absurd amount of powdered sugar to make it spreadable) so I tracked down the original recipe on Nigella Lawson’s site. She adds 2 tsp cornstarch and whips the cream before gently folding in. This significantly changes the character of the frosting, making it light and fluffy. Really surprised at this oversight in recipe adaptation.
Went with Nigella’s 2 sticks butter, yummy!
This cake is amazing! I used a chocolate stout instead of the Guinness. I also added a little salt, used regular sugar, subbed about 1/4 c of the white sugar for brown and used about 1/3 c less sugar. I also passed on the frosting. I think that may be gilding the lily.
Because some reviews said it wasn’t chocolate-y enough, I used half high quality semi sweet chocolate and half cocoa and upped the measurement to one cup. Came out moist and delicious. OMG the frosting takes the cake!
This is a great chocolate cake! It is dark, super moist, looks impressive, very easy to make, and is delicious. The soft cream cheese topping plopped on top is simple and different. I added a tbsp of Guinness Stout simple syrup to the cake batter and another tsp to the topping since I love Guinness.
Oh this is the best Chocolate cake. I baked on 10”X 10” casserole. Inside I layered with parchment paper. No fuss to clean the pan. I forgot to turn my oven, so when I put my cake in the oven, it was cold. 50 min later, a perfect cake was done. No mound in the middle, perfect square cake. I served with chocolate, fresh whipped cream. Half cup semisweet chocolate, 1/4 cup heavy cream, microwave 1 min, add the rest of heavy cream and whip.
An absolute banger — I topped with whipped cream mixed with cocoa powder for a lighter topping
The first time I made this, I followed the recipe exactly and I found it disappointing. The cake simply did not have enough flavor. I just made it a second time, this time using a coffee and vanilla stout from a local craft brewery and adding 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the dry ingredients. It is MUCH better. So delicious. My recommendation: Replace the Guinness with better quality craft stout and add 1/2 teaspoon of salt. What a difference!
Made this in a 9” x 13” glass baking pan to feed a birthday party. Baked at 350F for 30 minutes. It wasn’t tall (only about 1.5”), but it was moist and so delicious! We’ve made it on many different shapes pans. To keep it from sticking to the pan you can of course use parchment, but alternatively you can just butter, then dust with cocoa, then spray with cooking spray for good measure. Purists will cringe, but busy people who are glad to have a home-baked cake with real ingredients can smile!
I am not a fan of this cake. It is dark and dense with no pizzazz. It was edible with chocolate ice cream but I would not make it again. I did replace the sour cream with whole Greek yogurt so maybe that makes a difference?
I found it to be flavorless as well, when I made it. I don’t think the Greek yogurt would change the flavor, I believe the sour cream mostly enhances the moistness. I also don’t intend to make this again. Life is too short to eat flavorless desserts!
I found it flavorless the first time I made it as well. I made it again using a better stout than Guinness (a coffee and vanilla stout from a local brewery) and I added 1/2 tsp of salt to the dry ingredients. It is much more flavorful!
For all desiring measurements by weight, look no further than this recipe’s page on Nigella’s website.
Fantastic cake. Loved by all. Made the 18 Tbl version.
Left this in the oven for 1 hot and it was really dried out. Not very good.
I made this exactly as the recipe is written, used a good-quality cocoa, used a better stout, and was disappointed in the result. The cake is fine, but it doesn’t really have much chocolate flavor - or any flavor, to be brutally honest. It is moist enough, though I can’t imagine it with double the butter per the “tip,” it was oily on the bottom when I removed it from the pan. The frosting is the best part, creamy and delicious. I used the hint from another commenter and whipped the cream
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