chocolate guinness cake with baileys ganache

green letterings because St Patrick's!



If you know me I love my beer. I do! But I never liked stout. Only in desserts. They always taste so much better in desserts.

We don't celebrate St. Patrick's in Singapore but I just thought it'd be fun to do something according to these celebration all over the world (read: cinnamon pancakes for Pancake Day!).

My original intention for my St Patrick's Day special (which came one week early for my friends who got to eat this) post was a chocolate bailey's cake with bailey's ganache (wut wut) but I'm not that a BIG fan of Bailey's (I love my Baileys in ice creams)). Then I found a chocolate guinness cake recipe bookmarked so I decided to make a chocolate guinness cake with the baileys ganache instead.

I once tried chocolate guinness cupcakes with baileys buttercream but I finally figured out that I don't like buttercream. I'm bad with buttercreams too.

This recipe also helped me use up my Bailey's a little more quickly so I'm contented (dang, sometimes I forget certain alcohols have expiry dates :/)

Didn't like most of the photos that I took of the cake. I guess styling food early in the morning isn't just my thing.

I'm very happy with this cake cause the last time I baked a cake (dark chocolate cake!) the entire top broke :( and I couldn't wait for the ganache to set properly before I drizzled all over the cake so it looked freakin' odd.

This time the cake sank though. Probably because I over mixed the batter w/o realising until I saw all that air bubbles. Oops. But the ganache covered it up, and most importantly, it tastes good.

Do you like the swirls?? I love it.

I would've made a smaller cake but I wasn't in the mood to reduce the amount of ingredients so I just made a normal 9" cake....which turned out to be A LOT. So my friends have to thank my lazy ass. Mental note to self that nobody in my household will eat the stuff I bake so it's better to just bake a tiny cake...

Recipe:
(Taken from Nigella and Citrus and Candy)

For the Chocolate Guinness Cake:
250ml Guinness stout
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa powder
400g caster sugar
142ml sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2 + 1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 180ºc
1. In a saucepan, heat Guinness and butter (a slice at a time) together, then whisk cocoa powder and sugar when all the butter has melted.
2. In another bowl, beat sour cream with eggs and vanilla, then add the beer & butter mixture. Finally, add the flour and baking soda. Once the dry ingredients has incorporated, stop mixing it!
3. Pour batter into cake tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave it to cool completely in the tin.

For the Bailey's ganache:
200g dark chocolate (if using bar chocolate, chop it up)
100ml cream
100ml Bailey's
Pinch of sea salt
15g/1 tbsp unsalted butter (room temperature)

1. In a saucepan, bring cream, Baileys and salt to a simmer.
2. Pour the hot cream mixture over chocolate (in a heatproof bowl) and let it sit for a minute or so.
3. Gently stir to combine the mixture and beat in the butter until everything is smooth and well combined.
4. Set the ganache aside to cool until it becomes thick enough to spread over the cake.

Notes:
- The next time I bake this cake I'd probably just melt the butter and Guinness in the microwave. (Heating it and slowly melting it is a lot of work - I'm lazy)
- For the ganache, I only used about 40ml of cream (ran out of it and didn't realise) so I used more Bailey's, hence the boozier ganache that I ended up with. You can definitely use all cream for a more children-friendly cake (although I don't see the point when you're already eating a Guinness cake...) or all Bailey's for a boozy fun time.
- I baked this cake and made the ganache the night before so I just left the cake alone to cool overnight, the ganache in the fridge to set. You probably want to leave the ganache out to stand before spreading on the cake as it might be a little hard.

I'm thinking of a shepherd's pie right now.


P/S: This might just be my last blog post until I'm back from Taiwan in April. Busy busy busy with school.
P/P/S: My third time to Taiwan, maybe I'll post about my favorite foods I'd get whenever I'm there.