Guinness cake

If you ever need to bring some dessert at a session… try the Guinness cake:

1 cup Guinness
1/2 cup unsalted butter (8 tbsp)
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking soda

Frosting:
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup heavy cream

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees. lightly butter or grease a 9-inch springform pan.

In a large saucepan over medium-low heat, combine Guinness, butter and cocoa. Stir and cook very gently until butter and cocoa melt and the mixture is fairly smooth; remove from heat. Whisk in the sugar.

In a small bowl, mix the sour cream, eggs, and vanilla. Whisk this mixture into the Guinness mixture. Add the flour and baking soda and mix again until smooth.

Pour the batter into the buttered pan and bake 45 minutes to an hour, until risen and firm (and a knife comes out clean). Place on a wire rack and cool completely in pan.

Frosting:

Mix the powdered sugar and cream cheese until smooth. Mix in the cream until it is loose enough to spread easily. Spread on the top of the cooled cake only, so it resembles a poured Guinness beer with foam/head.

From:
http://www.paulabecker.com/blog/?p=767

This is truly delicious… but you may have hard time to play those fast reel sets with too much of it.

Cheers!

Make one for Jeremy.

TheSession cake

12 pints Guinness
3-4 unsweetened people
3-4 cup sour opinions
2 good eggs
2 all-purpose topics

Directions:

Launch a simple topic. Leave for a while.
Once you’ve got a response, add a little heat, stir very gently until bitter people start to contribute, then whisk up to a froth.
Wait for another 45 postings and then let it rest for a bit.

Very good Carabus and Mark!

My SO makes superb Guiness cake and she’s an excellent musician too, says I, with extreme smugness!

Alias ‘Porter Cake’… We have our own recipe for this too, but don’t usually make a frosting for it, though we do a cream cheese frosting for other concoctions. I second Carbus’ praise for a might tasty cake. Ours includes citrus zest and juice…

For an event we were involved in we once made a dozen large cakes. There were not complaints… ;-)

Going over your lovely list of ingredients again I forgot to mention we also add dried fruit too, which we pre-soaked in the Guiness / porter / stout…

Some might think this is a crime, but float a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of Guinness. It’s better than a root beer float.

root beer is really popular in Australia.

Root beer? I’ve used Guiness / stout / porter in making and baking bread too… It’s versatile stuff…

how big/small is a cup? like a china cup? a mug? DD cup?

hmmmm…

A friend told me about when he attended a wedding reception that had a Guinness theme: the cake was in the shape of a pint glass, chocolate, but with the "head" of beige frosting.

Everything at the reception had Guinness as one of the ingredients, so they said.

An american cup is 8 fl ounces

But you can get a European version of the recipe here
http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/chocolate-beer-cake,1858,RC.html
except Delia uses a chocolate icing instead of the white one used here.

That sounds good, thanks for that Carabus! I am going to try that.

That was funny Mark!

Herself wants to know what a springform pan is.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/SpringForm.htm

sounds stinkin. Gimme a pint of guinness over that muck anyday

Guinness ice cream to go with that cake.

Guinness ice cream
Makes 1 quart

½ vanilla bean, split lengthwise
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup Guinness stout (drink the rest)
2 Tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons molasses
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, scrape in the vanilla bean seeds. Add the pod, milk and cream. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let the flavors infuse for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan over medium high heat, whisk together the stout and molasses. Bring to a boil and turn off heat.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla extract. Whisk in a few tablespoons of the hot cream mixture, then slowly whisk in another ¼ cup of the cream. Add the remaining cream in a steady stream, whisking constantly. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan.

Stir the stout mixture into the cream mixture. Cook the custard over medium heat, stirring often with a wooden spoon for 6 to 8 minutes, or until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon.

Strain the mixture into a bowl and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight. Process the custard in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

not a bit of wonder trad musicians are getting fatter by the day

Thanks all for the replies! I am back after a good session and bit of sleep. Good recipe Mark! And thanks to ceolachan for suggesting “variations/ornamentations” to play on that tune… I would definitely send one to Jeremy, but don’t know if it will go through customs or survive the trip over the pond.

Someone told me they put a bit of cinnamon on the icing, I’ve never tried it.

I loved that cake but I agree that it does not replace a good pint…

Would this go well with Guinness punch?

I vaguely remember receiving a punch while drinking a Guinness. Is that what you are referring to?

Yeah, that would be it.

The Guinness part, no problem, the punch… I rather share cake with friendly people.

Thank you for sharing this recipe with us Carabus. I wonder if this recipe would work just as well if I substitute Shiner Bock instead of Guinness?

Guiness punch was featured on an episode of Chef and I’ve been curious about it ever since.

Bock would do it beautifully fauxcelt… I like that idea…

Stout / Porter works great as a base for broths marinades and stews…

So, what Guiness punches, the potable tipple types, does anyone out there have a recipe for?

For you old timers with a regularity problem, I have some vague memory of someone once describing to me a recipe that used stout / porter and prunes, stones removed of course…

I think you may use any bitter stout for this recipe. I never had Shiner Bock.

I am not sure about Guinness punch. I use to think that any mix with Guinness is a waste, that is before I found this cake recipe.

The main additive for Guinness punch seems to be condensed milk. I’ll have to try that.

I’ll take the cake, not sure about the ice cream in the Guinness.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a nice thesesson.org cake, Mark, I wish someone would cook one up, they’re delicious.

Yuck, milk? I do like a ‘floater’ ~ :-D Brown, but not as some might imagine it. this is a whiskey floater in Guiness. But, I much prefer the Guiness in one glass and the whiskey in another, but it is still a favourite of mine. The whiskey, back when I could get it, was more usually Jameson’s Crested Ten or Bushmills Black Bush… Damn I could go for that right now, and a big slice of Carabus’ cake…

I just remembered another quirk we sometimes exercised, treating the Guiness Cake like a fruit cake, and with the fruit and zest and juice as mentioned before, but with the additional soak of a nice whiskey, usually Jamesons…

Other variations ~ crystalized ginger and broken up dark chocolate bits…

I’m tempted to try it again soon, with a new stove, using Carabus’ cream cheese icing idea, maybe an orange variant… We’ve got a ‘Jacob’s Join’ (potluck) coming up where that might be a really nice addition to the evening’s festivities. That would be a nice change from the savouries I’ve been taking lately…

Save me a slice Carabus. I’ll pick up the whiskey on the way.

I just thought, you know, maple syrup / sugar would go nicely with that mix, in the cream cheese icing if nowhere else?

I am waiting for you ceolachan and don’t forget to bring some instruments too… About maple syrup, I don’t know. I am from a part of the world where we make everything with maple syrup but I am not sure you want to put too much sugar in this cake. I would definitely add a touch (just like vanilla) in the icing.

Jamesons wiskey made me think of a drop shot that I sometimes have called "Irish car bomb" which consist of a small glass of Guinness where you drop a shot glass of Jamesons and Baileys and drink it. I actually quite like it.

Yes, that’s it replacing the vanilla by maple syrup. I will try it next time.

Just don’t forget to add the flour or you may end up with a "sweet sludge" which doesn’t resemble a cake. This happened to someone when she tried a cake recipe which appeared in the Food Section of the local newspaper. When the editor of the Food Section proofread the recipe, somehow she didn’t notice that flour was missing and the recipe was printed without the flour. A day or two after the recipe appeared in the newspaper, the editor of the Food Section got a call from a puzzled reader who wanted to know why this particular cake recipe didn’t work as it was supposed to. The woman who had tried the cake recipe got a "sweet sludge" instead of a cake. That was when the editor of the Food Section noticed that she had forgotten to include flour on the list of ingredients. A correction was printed in the newspaper the next day.

I tried it the other night for my little brother’s birthday, and it was a big hit! Thanks for that.

My pleasure, I shared it because it was the same for me.

Cheers!

I just made one last weekend with a stout I made. Worked perfectly. I think I will go have a pint now, I love that beer.

Suddenly I’m feeling very hungry and thirsty… ;-)

Hungry and thirsty are good feelings when you can satisfy them…

Not bad in cup cakes too.