A Birthday Guinness Cake

Today is my husband’s birthday, and it’s not every day you turn 27 is it? For the next month and a half he gets to be older than me, lucky him. Obviously a cake was in order, because according to Julia Child a party without a cake is just a meeting. Not that we’re having a party, but you know what I mean, it is most definitely a cake situation, and nobody wants to attend meetings on your birthday…in fact, Matt is preg testing his heifers at the moment so perhaps a meeting of the bovine variety?

I actually made one of these bad boys last week and Matt has been devouring it in his lunchbox, so I thought I’d make him another. I’m nothing if not consistent. But this cake is just so. damn. good! It’s always a repeat winner, people will ooh and aah over your delicious cake, they just will. It’s a Nigella recipe so of course it’s beyond decadent and can be a bit temperamental with it’s sheer dampness (I usually cook it for about 5-10 minutes more than the original recipe recommends as I have had a few sunken middle disasters – eek!)

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Chocolate Guinness Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cake:
250ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa powder
400g caster sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla essence
275g plain flour
2 1/2 tsps bicarb soda

Frosting:
300g cream cheese
1 cup icing sugar
125ml cream

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. In a saucepan combine the Guinness and butter, heat until butter is melted. Throw in the cocoa and sugar and stir to combine. Set aside.

Beat the sour cream, eggs and vanilla together, fold in the flour and bicarb. It will be quite dry, almost to a dough. Stay calm! Combine with the Guinness mixture and whisk to get rid of the lumpy bits, pour into a greased or lined spring-form cake tin. Bake in oven for 45 minutes to an hour, until a skewer comes out clean from the centre and the cake springs back when touched. This will all depend on your oven, I tend to bake it for an hour, turning the cake at 30 minutes because the rear right hand corner of my oven is hot to trot. This cake is quite a wet one so be careful to cook it all the way through!

Cool the cake on a wire rack, still in the pan. Whip the cream cheese, sieve over the icing sugar gradually and beat it in too. Add in the cream and beat this through too. Spread generously on your cooled, dark, delicious cake.

Happy birthday to the most incredible human I know, I’m so honoured to be doing life with this man. He’s the absolute bees knees, the cream cheese frosting to my Guinness cake for sure. His patience, kindness and humility is beyond measure, anyone who knows him will tell you so too. I saw on Pinterest the other day something along the lines of ‘true love is giving him the red Starburst’. So true, I give Matt the red Starburst every time, without question.