Guinness Cake

After tinkering with a few different recipes for chocolate stout cake, this is what I came up with. It is delicious and versatile. You can leave off the icing and it will taste like a rich chocolate pound cake. Or bake it as a small layer cake instead of the bundt, frosting it with chocolate or vanilla buttercream. For a different flavor, I have substituted Coffee or Coca-Cola for the Guinness. Whenever I need a dense chocolate cake, this is my go-to recipe. It is actually better the day after you bake it, when the Guinness flavor has had time to mellow.

Cake

1 cup Guinness

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

3/4 cup Cocoa powder

2 cups all purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 teaspoons salt

2  eggs

3/4 cup sour cream

1/2 tsp vanilla

Icing
2 Cups confectioner's sugar
2 Tbsp butter, melted
2 Tbsp cup cocoa powder
2 Tbsp Guinness

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a bundt pan with baking spray.

Bring Guinness and butter to simmer in a pan over medium heat. When the butter is melted, take off heat and add cocoa powder. Whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to blend. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs then stir in the sour cream to blend. Add the chocolate mixture to the egg mixture gradually and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture, stirring just until there are no large lumps of flour left. Pour into bundt pan. Bake cake until tester inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Let it cool 10 minutes, then turn the cake out onto a rack to cool completely.

For icing, combine the sugar, cocoa, melted butter and Guinness and stir well until it is nice and smooth. Put into a microwave safe bowl and heat the icing for about 10 seconds to get it to a nice pouring consistency. Place the cooled cake on a rack and spoon the icing over the bundt cake. You can use as much or little as your taste desires.