Guinness Cake

barleybooley

Hi there fellow boardsies!

The buckeen's birthday is coming up soon and I was thinking of making him a cake shaped like a Guinness glass. Now, to do this I was thinking of using a standard swiss roll tin, maybe making it 3 tins high and layered with buttercream and cutting the bottom half slightly concave on two sides and using these pieces, stick them on the top so it looks like a Guinness glass, would that work do ye think?

Magic Monkey

You could make one swiss roll sheet of sponge and cut it in half, spread one half with your filling, place the other half on top, and then cut out your shape. It depends how big you want it. You may need two sheets of sponge. Either way, it's better to fill/stack all the layers up first before
cutting it to shape. Using a cardboard template will make it easier than doing it freehand.

If you Google "Guinness cake" you'll find similar examples where it's been covered with black sugarpaste, and a strip of white sugarpaste on top for the foam.

Flavour wise, you could make a Guinness sponge and a Baileys buttercream filling :-)

barleybooley

Thanks for the advice! Guinness and Bailey's Buttercream, would that be nice?!

Magic Monkey

I've made the Guinness cake recipe from here, and it's great. There's a Bailey's frosting recipe here that goes with it. You could use Tía María or Kahlua instead of Baileys. The Guinness cake in metric is as follows:

Makes two 8" x 2" springform rounds

Ingredients:

• 480ml Guinness
• 455g Unsalted butter
• 125g Cocoa powder, unsweet, Dutch-processed
• 560g Cake flour
• 800g Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Baking soda
• 1.5 tsp Salt
• 4 Eggs
• 320ml Sour cream

Directions:

1. Grease and line tin(s), grease paper. Bring Guinness and butter to simmer. Whisk in cocoa powder until smooth. Cool slightly.
2. Sift dry ingredients. Cream eggs and sour cream until blended. Beat in Guinness mixture until just combined. Fold in dry ingredients.
3. Bake @ 175c for 35 mins or until done. Cool in tin(s) for 10 mins, then remove from tin(s) and cool on a wire rack. Ice.

allandanyways

I'd make a stencil, as silly as it sounds and stick it on top of the layers of cake before you cut it. That way, all the layers will be the same size and you won't have to keep sawing away at it to make them all the same size once they've been sandwiched together.

I'm assuming the cake will be flat, i.e when he looks down at it, it'll be a Guinness glass looking up at him, not a standing up cake? Because you can imagine if someone banged off the table and you'd made the latter? :eek:

I don't know what himself would think of a guinness flavoured cake, if you think he'd like it, fire away but an alternative (especially if younger kids wanted some) could be a rich chocolate cake and as you said, some buttercream icing to sandwich the cakes together.

Black and white sugarpaste really is your best bet for getting a really authentic look though, unless you wanted just cake, then you could make a chocolate cake for the pint (and make chocolate buttercream) and a square vanilla sponge (or angel cake, it's really white) and shape the head accordingly.

It sounds like a lovely idea, fair play