Chocolate Guinness Cake

Second weekend away from home in Sunny Cornwall and the 3rd cake to be made here, this time the Chocolate Guinness Cake. It is to be eaten/tasted tonight as dessert for a 'Come dine with me' style meal my parents are hosting, so not just family tasting my creation this weekend.

Still getting used to the kitchen and equipment here, it is putting me out of my baking flow not knowing where everything is automatically and the space is smaller than my kitchen at home so takes some pre-planning to work out where going to measure and mix everything first. Made sure I had all the ingredients ready a few days in advance to try and stop last minute rushing around but obviously that never goes to plan.

The recipe for the cake started off in melting down some of the ingredients over the hob, including the Guinness, and adding them to the few dry ingredients there were to make the batter mixture. It started off well until the scales started playing up and kept zero-ing themselves or turning off. Luckily I had made sure I knew the weight of the bowl In was using so could work from that but it frustrated me so ended up having to go and purchase a new battery. This unfortunately didn't do the trick and so we have come to the conclusion that the scale are actually knackered. Going to try and replace them tomorrow (even though they are my Mother's) as I cannot bake the whoopie pies tomorrow with faulty ones.

Even with the dodgy scales, I think, I managed to measure everything out correctly and the ingredients and mixture came together well so seems like we avoided what could have been a massive disaster. The cake went into the oven at the temp given but it took in total about 1 hour 5 minutes to bake completely. Again I am putting this down to the difference in oven and also the fact the mark to show where the dial is set to has worn off and so it is a little bit of guess work in where it is set correctly. Even so the baking time didn't make a difference, the cake turned out wonderfully and smelt lovely as it was cooling.

I left it to cool for an hour or two before making the icing. It was only after I started to measure that I realised I didn't actually have enough icing sugar for the recipe. Stupidly forgot to pick up another packet when shopping yesterday and so had to half the recipe and just frost the top of the cake. This said it did make it look slightly more like a pint of Guinness though, so I suppose it was fitting! Finished it off with a dusting of cocoa, although it didn't quite turn out to be a light dusting after a slip of the hand so there I was,cake held over the sink, blowing a bit of the excess off! It made it look much better though and even with the lack of icing and the heavy handed 'dusting' I was pleased with the finish.

Now to sit back and wait for the dinner party to get around to tasting. Everyone there had a slice, including myself and it made 12 large slices ( i was not in charge of cake cutting) and it was gorgeous. It is a slightly dense cake than most in the cook book, due to the Guinness and the buttermilk but it was wonderfully chocolatey and had a tint of something else that wasn't the strong Guinness taste I was expecting. Was so moist anf the cream cheese frosting pairs perfectly with the cake, a definite for cake lovers, one of the guests even had seconds! The portions were large though and I couldn't finish mine even though I tried very hard but everyone agreed it was a wonderful. A slice remains to be tasted by my sister tomorrow when she returns, providing someone doesn't pinch it for themselves latter..I am making NO promises.