I made this cake to bring to a post-St. Patty’s Day corn beef and cabbage dinner at my Mama’s house tonight. When I was deciding on an Irish dessert to make, I thought, what better than to bake a Chocolate Guinness Cake using the recipe from the recipe index on guinness.com‘s own website. I pulled it up on my browser, skimmed it over, and saw that it called for:

verbatim…

3oz butter

1 large egg

¼ tsp vanilla essence

4oz self raising flour

1oz cocoa powder

1oz drinking chocolate powder

½ tsp baking powder

Pinch salt

3 fluid oz GUINNESS® Draught

My first thought was: What is the difference between cocoa powder and drinking chocolate powder? Perhaps they mean Ovaltine….

The second thing that ran through my head was: What the hell is vanilla essence? Hmm, I have some Warm Vanilla Sugar body spray from Bath and Body Works, maybe I could whisk in a few mists of that….

The third thing I thought was: Self raising flour?… You mean self RISING flour, unless of course, this is some kind of Irish lingo I am unaware of. And, while we’re on the subject, it’s FLAVOR- not flavour. And COLOR- not colour!

And finally, my mind grumbled: Forget it. The ingredients are measured by weight. Sorry, Arthur Guinness, but I drank too many pints of your delicious stout yesterday to have the mental acuity for doing conversions today.

I ended up going with a recipe from Taste of Home, so I can’t take credit for this one! The cake came out great though. It was moist, dense, and chocolatey with a bold flavor. I used a piping bag to make the icing look like the classic foamy head on a Guinness. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Recipe from Taste of Home

Cake

1 cup Guinness (dark beer)

1/2 cup butter, cubed

2 cups sugar

3/4 cup baking cocoa

2 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup sour cream

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Icing

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened

1-1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Grease a 9-in. springform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper; set aside.In a small saucepan, heat beer and butter until butter is melted. Remove from the heat; whisk in sugar and cocoa until blended. Combine the eggs, sour cream and vanilla; whisk into beer mixture. Combine flour and baking soda; whisk into beer mixture until smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake at 350° for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack. Remove sides of pan. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Add confectioners’ sugar and cream; beat until smooth (do not over-beat). Remove cake from the pan and place on a platter or cake stand. Ice top of cake.