Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake

From my superficial understanding of the Stoics and the Buddhists, they seem to have one thing in common: acceptance. The situation is not the issue as much as our feelings of what the situation should be. My favourite Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön has a lot to say on this, in her own words on Audible. As does Alain de Botton whose School of Life Conference in Barcelona is postponed to October.

Foodie in Barcelona will pivot into recipes for however many months this takes. I have a chef’s diploma from Leiths School of Food & Wine in London. And although previously my Instagram and website were an enviable fest of eating out, the reality is most of the time I eat at home, food that I’ve cooked for my family of 5.

I’m going to start off with Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake. I admire Nigella Lawson. She lost her sister, mother and husband to cancer within one year. (Her husband, John Diamond, chronicled his fight to the death with the disease in a book I loved C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too.) Then she married Saatchi which seemed to come with its own challenges. In spite of this, she has continued to cook accessible recipes and she is modest about her skills.

Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake is a heavy number, with a moist crumb and a heady barley aroma that will waft up dramatically every time you lift up the cake cloche. The cream cheese frosting cuts through the darkness of flavour and colour and is meant to make the whole thing look like a frothy pint of Guinness. Guinness beer has its origins in Ireland apropos of which I am reading The Heart’s Invisible Furies set in Ireland and loving it!

Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake (Link to original recipe)
Ingredients for Cake
(ALL YOUR INGREDIENTS SHOULD BE ROOM TEMPERATURE)
250 millilitres Guinness
250 grams of butter
75 grams of cocoa powder
400 grams caster sugar
150 millilitres sour cream or creme fraiche
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
275 grams plain flour
2½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

Ingredients for Frosting (Half Recipe)
(ALL YOUR INGREDIENTS SHOULD BE ROOM TEMPERATURE)
150 grams of cream cheese
75 grams of icing sugar
1 teaspoons cornflour
60 millilitres double cream (or whipping cream) minimum 30% fat content

• To begin with heat your oven to 170 C and line a 23cm springform tin (the kind with a latch to release the bottom) with baking paper. Butter the tin and set aside.
• Having read through the recipe, weigh out all your ingredients for the cake.
• Heat the 250ml of Guinness in a large saucepan. When it starts to bubble around the sides, whisk in the butter until it has melted.
• Turn off the heat and whisk in the sugar followed by the sieved cocoa powder.
• Break the eggs into the sour cream, add the vanilla and mix. Test the Guinness mixture to see that your finger can comfortably stay submerged in it. If the answer is yes, whisk in the eggs, sour cream and vanilla.
• Sieve the flour and the bicarbonate of soda and whisk in. I find a large balloon whisk works well. When the flour has disappeared stop whisking. (That is always the rule in cake otherwise you begin to work the gluten which makes the cake tough.)
• Pour the mixture into the lined butter cake tin and bake for anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. The reason it’s not an exact time is that ovens differ, some run hotter than others etc. Start testing after 45 minutes with a toothpick or skewer which should come out clean.  (Because of the Guinness and sour cream, this is a hard cake to dry out.)
• Once the cake is out and cooled down start on the frosting.

• For the Frosting (I make half the frosting and I find it to be enough)
• Using an electric handheld mixer (or stand mixer if you have one) whisk the cream cheese for about 30 seconds until it’s smooth. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides.
• Add the sieved icing sugar and cornflour and beat for about 1 minute until the sugar is well incorporated. Do not overbeat. (If you overbeat cream cheese it will turn to liquid, once that happens you can not bring it back to its original consistency. )
• Add the whipping cream and beat until it is a spreadable consistency. About 2 minutes longer.
• Frost the cooled cake. Enjoy!

Liked this recipe?  Try this one: Gluten Free Orange Cake with Chocolate Frosting.

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