St Patrick's Day: Guinness and Chocolate Cake

Happy St Patrick's Day to all my Irish family and friends!

Patrick was a 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Tradition holds that he died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick. Over the following centuries, many legends grew up around Patrick and he became Ireland's foremost saint. Today is all about celebrating all things Ireland, and what better way to do that than with a cake.

This is the simplest recipe ever, and can be made in a flash. It's from Sainsbury's Magazine, you can find their full recipe here. Without further-a-do, here is today's recipe...Guinness and Chocolate Cake...

Ingredients
125g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
100ml Guinness
40g cocoa powder
200g light brown sugar
100ml whole milk
2 large eggs
175g plain flour
¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Milk or dark chocolate, to decorate

Frosting
100g unsalted butter, softened
200g icing sugar, sieved
100g cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method
Preheat your oven to 180C.
Lightly grease a 900g loaf tin and line with a strip of baking paper, so that the excess hangs over the sides of the tin.
Put the butter into a pan and place over a medium heat until melted. Remove from the heat, and add the Guinness and cocoa powder, whisking together until smooth.
Whisk the sugar, milk and eggs into the Guinness mixture.
In a bowl, mix together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ¼ teaspoon salt. Add the Guinness mix and whisk until smooth and combined.
Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and bake in the preheated oven for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before carefully lifting out; cool on a wire rack.

To make the frosting, put the butter into a medium bowl and beat until smooth and creamy.
Add the icing sugar in 3 stages, mixing until combined.
Once all the icing sugar has been added, beat until it's light and fluffy.
Add the cream cheese and vanilla and beat until just fully combined (if you beat it for too long, the frosting will become too loose).

To decorate, spread the frosting over the top of the cooled cake and finish with some chocolate shavings.

There you have it, it's honestly the simplest recipe ever, and it tastes so yummy!

However, if Guinness just doesn't float your boat, then why not try replacing it with Coca-Cola instead. It keeps the cake nice and moist, and delivers a deeper flavour like the Guinness.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Charley x

    Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    The Hummingbird Bakery's Rocky Road Bars

    Rocky Road is a delightful dessert. It always goes down a treat at parties, coffee mornings, at home with the family-pretty much anywhere to be honest. My favourite recipe for Rocky Road has got to be by The Hummingbird Bakery. It's absolutely gorgeous, and it's such a quick and easy recipe. It also makes 12 generous portions so there's no need to fiddle on with multiplying the recipe to make sure it serves everyone. Great right? So without further a do, here's the recipe! Ingredients: 1.4KG milk chocolate, roughly chopped 8 regular sized chewy, filled chocolate bars of your choice (such as Snickers or Mars), roughly chopped 100g marshmallows 180g maltesers 100g dried apricots, roughly chopped 100g raisins 100g cornflakes 100g chocolate vermicelli *You will also need a 33x23x5 cm baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper* Method: Put the milk chocolate into a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (do not let the base of the bowl touch the ...
    Read more

    St David's Day: Welsh Cakes

    Image
    Happy St David's Day/Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus to all my Welsh readers and family! Have a spectacular day! Today's recipe is a classic Welsh one, and is a good old family recipe...Welsh Cakes. They are basically my favourite thing on the planet, and whenever I go to Wales I always come home with a pack (or ten) of these beauties. You won't be disappointed. Ingredients 8oz self raising flour Pinch salt 4oz softened butter 4oz caster sugar, plus a little extra for dusting 0.5 tsp mixed spice 1 tsp currants 4oz currants 1 egg, beaten Method Sift the flour and salt in a bowl. Rub in the butter. Add the sugar, spice, syrup and currants. Mix in the egg to make a soft dough. Pat out on a lightly floured surface, to a quarter of an inch thick. Use a medium scone cutter to cut out into rounds. Bake on a medium hot griddle pan, turning once until golden brown on both sides. Remove to a wire rack to cool and dust with sugar while hot. How simple is that? They rea...
    Read more

    Rosemary, Black Pepper and Sea Salt Scones

    Image
    Hello! Today's recipe is a makeshift one. I fancied making some scones, but wasn't too sure what type or what shape to make, and so I ended up picking some fresh rosemary from the garden, and pairing it with some cracked black pepper and sea salt flakes. They turned out pretty scrummy! Ingredients 2 cups plain flour 4 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp sea salt flakes, plus a little extra to finish 1 tsp sugar 1 tbsp. butter 1 tbsp. freshly chopped rosemary (or 1 tsp of dried) 1 cup milk (I didn't use the whole cup full, but you can use the remainder for washing before baking.) Method Pre-heat the oven to 220C. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl, and rub in the butter. Add the rosemary, and mix again, before adding the milk. Combine with your hands to form a soft dough. Roll out on to a floured board to 1.5 inch thickness and cut into either rounds or squares. I also shaped some of mine into a doughnut shape by rolling out a section of the dough into a long thin ...
    Read more