Chocolate Guinness Cake

Someone at work gave me a recipe for Guinness chocolate cake.  A few weeks later she followed up by bringing me two cans of Guinness!!!

I admit it...beer is gross and I couldn't imagine a cake using it would taste good at all.  I googled the recipe and found a variation that used Bailey's for the icing.

I made the cake and between layer icing using the original recipe - from Chatelaine as seen here. I made the outer icing using the Bailey's recipe from the blog "Let them eat cake" here.

Repeated here for convenience:

Ingredients

• 11/2 cups (375 mL) all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup (175 mL) cocoa powder
• 11/2 tsp (7 mL) baking powder
• 1 tsp (5 mL) baking soda
• 1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
• 3/4 cup (175 mL) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup (250 mL) lightly packed brown sugar
• 2  eggs
• 1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla
• 1 cup (250 mL) dark stout beer, such as Guinness, or your favourite beer
• 3 cups (750 mL) icing sugar
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/3 cup (75 mL) beer or milk
• 1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla
•  Generous pinch of salt
• 11/4 cups (300 mL) candied beer nuts, chopped (optional)

Believe it or not, beer does amazing things for cake. Our St. Patrick’s Day special is dense and rich, with the slightest undertone of stout.

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Lightly oil or spray two 8-in. (20-cm) round cake pans. Sift flour with cocoa, baking powder, soda and salt into a medium bowl. Stir to mix. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter with sugar for 3 min. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after additions. Beat in vanilla. Using a wooden spoon, stir about one-third of flour mixture into butter mixture. Add half the beer. Repeat additions, ending with flour. Stir just until evenly mixed. Pour batter into pans and smooth top.
• Bake in centre of oven until a cake tester inserted in centre of cake comes out clean, 25 to 28 min. Cool in pans on a rack for 10 min. Run a knife around inside edge of each pan, then turn cakes out onto a rack. Cool completely.
• For icing, sift icing sugar with cocoa into a bowl. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter until creamy, 2 to 3 min. Gradually beat half the icing-sugar mixture into the butter, scraping down the sides as needed. The mixture will be dry at this point. Gradually beat in beer or milk, vanilla and salt, then remaining icing-sugar mixture. 
• To frost, place 1 cake, top side down, on a cake plate. Spread one-third of the icing overtop. Place remaining cake on top, domed side up. Gently press down. Spread it with half the remaining icing, then spread the sides with icing.  Cake will keep well, covered, at room temperature, up to 2 days.

Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
1 - 8 oz. package cream cheese
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups icing sugar
3 tablespoons Bailey's Irish Cream

Method

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter, cream cheese and vanilla until light and fluffy.
2. Slowly add icing sugar and beat until fluffy.
3. Add Bailey's and stir until combined. If the frosting is too soft to use at first, refrigerate it for 15 minutes or so.

Sadly - this is the only pic I have of the cake.  I completely forgot to take pictures of this one.  This cake was really good.  I brought it to work and everyone who tried it said that it was really good.  A couple of people said that it was the best cake they had ever eaten.  Who knew beer made good cake?  I suspect it was the Bailey's that did it. :)