Guinness Cake

Today is my wee brother's 22nd birthday, and seeing as a while ago I stumbled across a recipe for a Guinness cake, I thought I'd make one from him.  Anyone who knows my brother will know that Guinness is his drink of choice so this seemed ideal.  After I first found out you could make a Guinness cake, I had a look about online for different recipes and settled on one by Nigella Lawson, which you can find here.

It was one of the easiest cakes I've ever made, because it was a wet batter, so you really just mix it all together in a big pot and then pour it in your cake tin.  Easy!  It also looks nice as you're mixing it all together, here it is with all the ingredients in, just waiting to be beaten:

Guinness cake mix

 

Then you just give it a good beat with your whisk to bring it all together and make sure there's no lumps.  I always beat my cakes a lot so that you can get a lot of air in and keep the cake light and fluffy whilst it bakes.  So here it is, ready to go in the cake tin:  a chocolatey delight!

Nigella's recipe says to put it in a 23" tin, and I only have a 20" tin, so I used that and then poured what was left into a wee smaller tin to bake too, just because I didn't want to waste the mixture!  The extra bit came out burnt because there was less of it and so it didn't need to be baked for as long as the full cake.  But the other one came out fine.  I baked it for just over 55 minutes, though I kept checking it after the 45 minute mark so it wouldn't dry out.

The tin I used was a non-stick spring-base baking tin, and I didn't have enough baking paper to line it all (oops), so I greased it with butter and lined the sides but not the bottom.  This morning I had to kind of pry the base off the bottom of the cake, but it wasn't burnt or anything so it was fine.  Next time I will line it though, I think because it was a wet mixture it made it stick more to the base, and lining it is really a better idea.  However, if you don't have baking paper (or you just can't be arsed) then as long as your pan is non-stick and you grease it well, it'll be OK, just a bit more fiddly at the end.

I left the cake overnight to cool completely, so it didn't fall apart when I took it out the tin, and this morning I whipped up the creamcheese icing.  Here's the finished result:

Guinness cake

I think the idea with this cake is that it looks a bit like a pint of Guinness: with the dark cake, and the creamy white head.  I also drew a wee shamrock in the icing, like they do on a real pint, but it doesn't show up all that well, so I made up a wee sign and stuck it on instead.

Now all we have to do it eat it!