Cake with cocoa and dark beer, with a rich cream cheese frosting.
This, in a few words, is the definition of Guinness cake, the famous Irish dessert that is made every March in honor of Saint Patrick.
The main ingredient of this iconic cake is Guinness dark beer, the beer-symbol of Ireland.
The appearance of Guinness cake – an almost black cake with white cream – resembles a glass of dark beer served with its white foam.
All dark beers, such as Guinness, owe their very dark color and rich flavor to the intense roasting of the malt.
That is also the reason why in this cake the combination of dark beer and cocoa works so well.
Before making the Guinness cake, I did extensive research online, mainly on foreign websites. On all of them the recipes included almost identical ingredients for the cake and the cream cheese frosting. On only one website, the excellent Serious Eats, I saw that there is also syrup for Guinness cake. Even though I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the idea of extra sugar, I decided to try it because first, I had never tried syrup with beer before and second, I really liked the idea of adding espresso.
I ended up reducing the sugar in the cake itself by 100 grams so the result wouldn’t be overly sweet, especially since the cream cheese frosting also contains sugar. I also chose to use brown sugar, demerara, which has a noticeable molasses aftertaste and gives a wonderful caramel-like flavor.
The result was a wonderful combination of chocolate, dark beer and espresso.
However, if you prefer less sweet desserts, you can easily skip the syrup in the recipe; the cake will still be very good.
Ingredients
- 240 ml Guinness beer or another dark beer
- 50 g unsweetened cocoa powder
- 250 g sugar
- 140 g strained Greek yogurt, full-fat or low-fat (I used 2%)
- 220 g all-purpose flour
- 120 g melted butter or vegetable oil (I used butter)
- 2 large eggs
- 1 packet vanilla
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp baking powder
For the syrup
- 200 ml Guinness
- 1 double espresso (40 ml) or 1 tsp instant espresso
- 100 g sugar
For the cream cheese frosting
- 200 g cream cheese
- 120 g butter
- 250 g powdered sugar
- 1 packet vanilla
- 2 tbsp coffee liqueur
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Instructions
Place a small saucepan on the heat, add the sugar and the beer and stir.
Let the mixture heat until the sugar dissolves, about 2–3 minutes. Add the espresso, immediately remove from the heat and stir.
Remove the saucepan from the heat and allow the syrup to cool.
Prepare the cream cheese buttercream.
In a bowl add the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and coffee liqueur.
Start beating with a hand mixer, gradually adding the powdered sugar.
When the buttercream is ready, cover it with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator until needed.
Prepare the cake batter.
Place a small saucepan on the heat. Add the butter and once it melts add the beer.
Stir and leave the mixture on the heat for 2–3 minutes, no longer.
Remove from the heat and set aside.
In a large bowl add the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla and salt. Mix very well with a whisk.
Beat the eggs lightly with a fork and add them to the flour mixture, then add the yogurt. Mix again with the whisk.
Gradually add the beer mixture while stirring constantly. The goal is to have a smooth and relatively thin cake batter without lumps.
Butter a 22 cm baking pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake in a preheated oven for 35–40 minutes using top and bottom heat at 170°C.
To check if the cake is properly baked, after 35 minutes insert a knife into the center. If it comes out clean, the cake is ready.
Otherwise leave it for a few more minutes to bake.
Once baked, remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool for at least 45–50 minutes.
Remove the cake from the pan and place it on a rack or serving platter.
Prick the cake with a fork. Using a pastry brush, soak the surface of the cake with the syrup.
Cover the surface with the buttercream.
The Guinness cake is ready to serve. If you love cakes with “character”, you will definitely enjoy the whole orange cake as well as the chocolate cake.
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