Chocolate Guinness Cake

This is the final installment of St. Patrick’s Day recipes. It’s good to finish off a hearty Irish meal with some fabulous dessert. This recipe for Chocolate Guiness Cake with Bailey’s Icing is an adaptation of an adaptation. Here we go.

Start by lining your cake pan with parchment paper. I made a layer cake, but you can use a springform pan or a sheet pan, whatever you want. Here’s an easy way to line your circular pans with parchment.

Fold a piece of parchment into quarters and then once again, as it you were making a snowflake. Line it up in the center of your pan and then cut to fit just inside the edge. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to keep your cake from sticking to the bottom. And this cake is really moist, so you absolutely need the parchment paper.

In a large saucepan, melt 10 oz of unsalted butter with a cup of Guinness. Then add the following and take it off heat and let come to room temperature.

• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar

It will look rich and chocolately at this point.

It won’t take the cocoa mixture long to cool. In a separate bowl beat together the following:

• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 TB vanilla extract

Add it to the chocolate.

Now whisk together the dry ingredients before adding them to the chocolate:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt

Pour into cake pans and bake at 350° for about 50 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack. This cake is really dense and takes a long time to cool.

For the icing, mix 4 TB unsalted butter and 4 cups of sifted confectioners sugar. Add Bailey’s one tablespoon at a time until you reach a creamy consistency. Ice your cake and serve.

The Guinness and chocolate provided a rich, not overly sweet cake that I liked. Although it was so moist and dense it was difficult to ice. Large crumbs came off in the icing no matter how careful I was. From a presentation standpoint, I was not thrilled about that.

The real star was the icing. Butter, sugar, and Bailey’s are a dream combination. I think it would be a nice icing for a chocolate mocha cake or even some thin coffee cookies.