Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I thought I’d share this amazing cake with you! Did you ever try using beer as an ingredient in a cake before?! Done right it tastes amazing, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate this saint than with a beer in one hand and having a slice of beer cake in another (probably on a fork, but really depends on how many other beers you had before) 😀
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Tools you need
Springform pan. Perfect shape for your cake in the making.
Chef’s knife. Butter melts faster when cut in pieces 🙂
Whisk for whisking things, as the name implies.
Saucepan for saucing pans heating up beer and butter.
Before you can put the ingredients into the pan, you need to mix them somewhere, mixing bowls to the rescue! Make sure bowls you use are adequately sized. There are few things worse than overflowing bowls.
Measuring spoons to, you know, measure things with them.
Measuring cups to measure larger quantities of things than with measuring spoons. (Who comes up with these descriptions?)
Kitchen scale because baking is a fine art and perfection is a little bit more reachable when you quantify things.
Spatula to put the froth on the cake and make the whole thing actually look like beer. Important stuff here.
Electric mixer. Mixing is great and all, but doing it by hand can get exhausting. Sometimes you can outsource that work to a family member. Other times you need a bit more power.
Kitchen mittens. Things get hot in the oven. ‘Nuff said.
Round serving tray. You can serve a cake on anything, even eat it straight from the pan. It’s round, though, so it’s gonna look best on a round serving tray and there’s plenty to choose from.
Cake stand is a fancier way to display your cake than the serving tray.
Ingredients
Makes 12 slices
For the cake:
- 250 ml (1 cup) Guinness beer
- 250 g (1 ⅛ cups) unsalted butter
- 75 g (¾ cup) cocoa powder
- 400 g (2 cups) sugar
- 142 ml (½ cup & 2 tbsp) sour cream
- 2 eggs
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 275 g (2 ¼ cups) all purpose flour
- 2 ½ tsp baking soda
For the topping:
- 300 g (1 ⅕ cups) cream cheese
- 150 g (1 ½ cup) icing sugar
- 125 ml (½ cup) whipping cream
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (356°F)
- Oil or butter a 23 cm springform pan, dust with flour and set aside.
- Pour the Guinness beer into a large wide saucepan, add the sliced butter and heat until the butter is melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar.
- With electric mixer beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and baking soda.
- Pour the cake batter into the pan and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the pan on a cooling rack.
- When the cake’s cold, place it on a serving tray or a cake stand and start the icing.
- Using electric mixer lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, add the icing sugar and then beat them both together until combined.
- Add the cream and beat again until it makes a spreadable consistency.
- Spread the cream with the spatula on the black cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous Irish pint.
