Nineteen hundred and twenty two NY Times readers can’t be wrong. That is how many NYT cooks have rated this Guinness cake an average of five stars (out of five stars), some giving the cake rave written reviews sprinkled with praises like “Divine!” and “Insanely Good!.”
Some of the NYT reviewers went so far as to suggest subbing in some Bailey’s Irish Cream for some of the heavy cream called for in the cream cheese frosting. Who could argue with that!
The only consistent negative review was that the cake, once baked, sinks a bit in the middle. I figured that wouldn’t happen to me. Baking this cake isn’t my first rodeo. I know my way around the kitchen.
Sure enough, though, when I baked the cake, the center sank. Damn.
Not to worry, though. There were lots of recommendations to relax (maybe drink some of the Irish Cream!) and just cover up that little flaw with a heavier application of the cream cheese frosting. Who would know?
It was also recommended to use a quality beer in the recipe, one with a more complicated flavor profile to enhance the cake’s flavor. One person, interestingly, recommended using North Coast’s Old Rasputin’s Imperial Stout in the recipe. What? Having taught European history for a very long time and being infatuated with Russian history, that recommendation caught my eye. Any beer named after the wily Rasputin has to be very interesting. Rasputin, if you have forgotten your Russian history, was the debauched consigliere to Tsarina Alexandra, the wife of the last Russian Tsar. Desperate, she welcomed him into the Russian court believing that he could cure her son’s hemophilia. His subsequent notoriously-debauched behavior led to his murder by a group of nobles. The Romanov dynasty collapsed a few months later.
North Coast’s Old Rasputin’s Stout, it turns out, is produced in the tradition of 18th Century English brewers who supplied the court of Russia’s Catherine the Great. With its rich and complex flavors, the stout has quite a cult following. Seems kind of appropriate for a beer named after Rasputin.
Here is my adaptation of the recipe.
Save RecipeIngredients
- Butter for pan
- 1 C. Guinness stout
- 10 T. unsalted butter
- 3/4 C. unsweetened cocoa
- 2 C. superfine sugar
- 3/4 C. sour cream
- 2 large eggs
- 1 T. vanilla extract
- 2 C. all-purpose flour
- 2 1/2 t. baking soda
- 1 1/4 C. confectioners' sugar
- 8 ounces cream cheese (at room temperature)
- 1/2 C. heavy cream (or a mixture of heavy cream and Bailey's Irish Cream)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Butter a 9-inch springform pan and line the pan with parchment paper.
- Using a large saucepan, combine butter and Guinness over medium-low heat. Heat until the butter melts and then remove the pan from the heat. Add cocoa and superfine sugar and whisk to blend. (You can buy superfine sugar or you can put granulated sugar into your food processor and process until you have superfine sugar.)
- In another bowl, combine sour cream, eggs and vanilla (I used vanilla paste) and mix well. Add the Guinness/butter mixture and mix well. Whisk the baking soda and flour together and add to the batter. Mix until smooth. Pour the batter into your buttered springform pan and bake until risen and firm, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Remove the pan from the oven and put on a wire rack to allow the cake to cool completely in the pan. (I baked the cake for about 45 minutes to avoid having a too dry cake. Nevertheless, I thought the cake was at its moist best on the second day.)
- To make the frosting, mix confectioners' sugar with a hand mixer (or in your food processor) until any lumps are broken up. Then, add the cream cheese to the sugar and mix until smooth. Add the heavy cream (or the mixture of heavy cream and Bailey's Irish Cream) and mix until your frosting is smooth and can be easily spread on the top of your cake.
- Remove the cooled cake from your springform pan and put it on a cake stand to ice. Ice the top of the cake only. You want the final frosted cake to resemble a frothy pint of Guinness.
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