Chocolate Guinness Cake

St. Paddy's day is over, and I am (mostly) recovered from the holiday. I wouldn't call my celebrations wild, per se, but it wasn't sober. John and I headed to a friend's lake house, and stayed there most of the weekend, with plenty of beer, red wine (my favorite), and this Chocolate Guinness Cake!

I'd heard of using Guinness beer as an ingredient in food, in both main courses and deserts, before. Sounded like a unique challenge, and who doesn't want to try a cake with beer in it??? The finished product is not as sweet as your average store bought chocolate cake mix, but not bitter either. The beer adds a unique taste that is hard to describe, giving it depth.

I placed the batter in a 8" spring form pan when it reached the consistency of brownie batter. You can see a crack in the cake, where frosting dips down in the photo above. Cracking creates more space for holding the made-from-scratch cream cheese frosting on top!

One last note - I'd like to introduce you to the most expensive butter I have ever bought, ever.  I'm not going to tell how much I paid for my Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter. It's sinful expensive, like eating a cake with an entire bar of it inside! Feel free to use regular old plain butter, if this is bit much for the budget.

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Chocolate Guiness Cake

Adapted from Simply Recipes March-18-2013

Moist chocolate cake with Guinness beer baked in

Ingredients

• 1 cup Guinness Beer
• 10 TBS unsalted Irish Butter
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 TBS vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour 
• For frosting:
• 1/2 cup butter, room temp
• 1 8 oz package Philly cream cheese, room temp
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 8" springform pan with butter and line the bottom with parchment paper. Cut paper to fit bottom.2. In a large saucepan, place the butter and beer. Cook over medium-high heat until the butter has melted. Add the cocoa powder and sugars and whisk together. Take off heat and allow to come to room temp.3. In another bowl, beat together the sour cream, eggs and vanilla extract until very well combined. Add the butter-beer mixture and beat together. 4. In another bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and salt. Add to the beer-batter mixture and beat together until it just comes together, should look like brownie batter. Pour into the prepared pan. Drop pan gently a couple of times to get air bubbles out. Bake for 50 minutes, time may vary depending on oven. (If you baking in a gas oven, will usually be less.) Allow to cool before removing from pan. Run a knife around edge of pan to separate the cake, then pop off ring.5. For the frosting - using an electric mixer, mix butter and cream cheese together until very smooth, about 3 min. Continuously scrape down sides to ensure even mixing. Add vanilla extract, beat in. Gradually add the sugar, continue adding until you get desired sweetness and thickness. 6. Spread frosting on cooked cake and serve. Must be refrigerated, due to cream cheese frosting.

Yield: 1 8" cake