2010 Cooking Club Week 40: Chocolate Guinness Cake with Baileys Frosting

Magic Monkey

For this week's cooking club, I'm making Chocolate Guinness Cake with Baileys Frosting. The original recipe comes from here with the frosting recipe here. I have made slight variations to both recipes.

I'm not making a layered cake, as I prefer the icing on top to mimic a pint of Guinness, but you can layer the cake as seen in the second link. I've added coffee to the basic recipe to give extra depth and flavour to it, as coffee pairs very well with chocolate, e.g. mocha. The cake itself is soft, light, and moist.

Notes

• Remove the eggs, sour cream, cream cheese and butter for the frosting from the fridge 30 mins before making the cake, to allow them to come to room temperature

Chocolate Guinness Cake with Baileys Frosting
One cake makes 1 x 9” x 2.5” (23cm x 6cm) springform round

Ingredients:

• 240ml Guinness
• 227g Butter
• 62g Cocoa powder
• 1 tsp (teaspoon) Instant coffee granules

• 280g Plain or Cake flour

Note: You can substitute the plain or cake flour for self-raising flour. If so, reduce the baking soda from 1/2 Tbsp (Tablespoon) to 1/2 tsp (teaspoon)

• 400g Granulated sugar
• 1/2 Tbsp Baking soda
• 1/4 tsp Table salt

• 2 Large eggs
• 160ml Sour cream

Ingredients: Guinness, cocoa powder, instant coffee granules, butter; granulated sugar, salt, cake flour, baking soda; sour cream, eggs

Method:

1. Line your tin with baking paper. I use this method:

Separate the base from the ring


Cover the base with baking paper


Cut off the appropriate size


Lock the ring back over the paper and base




Cut off the excess


Grease the baking paper base and sides of the ring well. I use margarine, as butter is expensive to use just as an anti-sticking agent, and contributes little to flavour and colour around the edge


Left-Right: Guinness, Butter, Instant coffee granules, Cocoa powder


Over medium heat, melt the butter with the Guinness and instant coffee granules and bring to a simmer


Remove from the heat, and whisk in the cocoa powder until smooth. Cool slightly


Clockwise from top left: Cake flour, Granulated sugar, Table salt, Baking soda


Add the flour to a large mixing bowl, then add the sugar, salt, and baking soda

Post has to be split due to large number of images

Magic Monkey

Whisk to combine all the dry ingredients evenly


Sift the dry ingredients into another large mixing bowl


At this stage, you should have your Guinness mixture that is cooling slightly, and your sifted dry ingredients


Add the sour cream and eggs to a jug or bowl, and whisk together to combine





All three stages of the cake are now ready: the dry ingredients, the egg/sour cream mixture, and the Guinness mixture


Stir the egg/sour cream mixture into the Guinness mixture until smooth


Transfer the combined wet mixure to a large mixing bowl


Whisk in the dry ingredients to the wet mixture


Almost there...


Done! The cake batter is now ready to go


Pour into the prepared pan

Magic Monkey

Bake @ 175c on the middle shelf of the oven, for 45-55 mins. On the base of my oven is €2 unglazed tile that I use as a pizza stone. Haven't made pizza on it in a while, as you can see

To test whether the cake is ready, insert a long thin skewer or knife blade into the centre. If it comes out clean, with just a few moist crumbs clinging to it, it's ready


Leave to cool in the tin on a wire rack for 10 minutes


Remove the edge of the springform pan


Using a cake board, plate, or cardboard circle (I use these plastic cake liners I got in IKEA), place one on top of the cake...


...and flip the cake upside-down. Remove the base of the springform pan


Then remove the baking paper


Place cake on the wire rack, and leave to cool to room temperature, around 1 hour

Meanwhile, make the frosting:

Baileys Frosting

• 277g cream cheese @ room temperature
• 113g unsalted butter @ room temperature
• 160-230g icing sugar, sifted
• 3 Tbsp. Baileys

Clockwise from top left: Cream cheese, Butter, Icing sugar, Baileys

1. Cream the cream cheese until light, fluffy, and most importantly, smooth. Add in the butter and beat until creamy.
2. Gradually add in the minimum amount of icing sugar, and taste. Add more until sweet enough for your palate.
3. Trickle in the Baileys. Taste, and add more as necessary.

Your frosting should look something like this. I refrigerated it for 45 mins to 1 hour to firm it up before frosting the cake

Now all that's left to do is...


...cover the cake and...



...enjoy!

You'll notice on the frosting in the last pic these are lumps. This is because I forgot to cream the cream cheese separately first, and instead creamed it together with the butter.

That's it, hope you enjoy

BaZmO*

Epic!

Well done, looks great.

Loopy

A lot of photos and effort there. The end result does looks fantastic but really, 7 photo's to line a tin?

Magic Monkey

Yeah, that may have been overkill But I wanted to show that method properly, as it's much better than cutting out a circle (cartouche), as it's tighter and smoother, and won't bake into the cake, as can happen with a looser circle. Glad you liked it anyway!

Loopy

I made a chocolate cake on Saturday and asked my OH to cut a circle out to line the tin. FFS, he nearly had the calculator out and had to attempt it a couple of times before he got it right

Seaneh

You can see how epic it's going to taste just by how dense and moist the cake looks when cut. Really looking forward to trying this during the weekend.

CombatCow

Save me a piece

blueirishangel

Looks amazing!!! Well done on the pics - hope to try this over weekend.

seabre

I have one of those spring type cake tins but it doesn't have lattice effect on the bottom piece. Its just plain - would this work just as well? Looks lovely and fair play to ye for going to all the effort with photos etc. Your instructions are so easy to follow I am inspired to give this a go tomorrow.

Thanks again!

Magic Monkey

Yes, it'll work fine, the lattice effect or not won't make a difference.

Susie_Q

I'm making this for a friend's birthday this weekend, I can't wait as it looks so ridiculously good. Will report back - with pics!

Little Alex

Me and Mrs. Alex made this tonight. At the moment the cake is cooling on a rack and the icing is chilling in the fridge.

We'll update tomorrow with pics and a report on yumminess... it's looking good so far from fingerdipping!

... just had it now and it was delicious! As I made up too much of the mix for my cake tin I used the remains to bake two mini cakes.

Susie_Q

I made this over the weekend and the cake had definite strengths and weaknesses.

The best thing about it by a mile was the texture of the sponge; really moist and tender and practically melted in your mouth. It was really lovely. The icing was also amazing.

However the sponge had very little flavour and really the only taste was of the icing. If I was to make this again I would take out about 2oz of the flour and replace with more cocoa powder. For a chocolate cake it had absolutely no chocolate flavour at all, or any flavour for that matter. I would also up the coffee to 2tsp as the cake is pretty enormous.

Overall it was well received but needs a kick up the arse in the flavour department!

Charlie.

The texture of this cake is amazing, totally melts in your mouth!!
The step by step pictures were fantastic aswel for a total novice like me! Thanks OP