chocolate stout cake

chocolate stout cake

• 7 Oct 2024

This is another classic story of cake redemption. Quite a few years ago I jumped onto the stout cake bandwagon and whenever I made it, using Nigella Lawson's recipe, it was very well received. One of my colleagues so liked the cake that she made it for her daughter's 21st birthday. For reasons I'm unsure of, I stopped making it.

Last month, a workmates' birthday came up and I decided to dust the cobwebs off the chocolate stout cake recipe. I topped the cake with my absolutely amazing Natalie Paull inspired cream cheese icing. The cake was a roaring success but I didn't photograph it, so I made another chocolate stout cake just so I could share the recipe with you. I took the cake into work and I can report that my workmates didn't mind one little bit.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 17cm cake. If you'd like to make a larger version, I've added a link to the original recipe - see below - which makes a 23 cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Chocolate stout cake, adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe.

Ingredients

120 mls stout
120g unsalted butter
30g cocoa 
200g caster sugar
65g sour cream at room temperature
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
140g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Icing
80g full fat softened cream cheese
80g unsalted butter, squidgy soft 
1 tsp vanilla paste
25g dried milk powder
pinch salt
80g icing sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C, conventional and grease, flour and line the base of a 17cm springform tin with baking paper.

Pour the stout into a large wide saucepan, add the butter — in spoons or slices — and heat until the butter's melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb soda.

Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake on the centre rack for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake. When the cake's cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the icing.

Icing
Place the cream cheese, butter, vanilla paste, milk powder and salt in the bowl of electric stand mixer. Sift the icing sugar over the top. Beat with the paddle attachment for 10 minutes on speed 4 (below low) until pale, and fluffy. Store covered in the fridge until needed. If refrigerated, rewarm in the microwave in 20-second bursts until softened. 

Ice the top of the black cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.

The cake is a thing of beauty in its simplicity and I believe this is the correct cake to icing ratio.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian