Baking

Chocolate Guinness Loaf Cake

A chocolate Guinness cake cut down to a single loaf tin, so there are no layers to stack and nothing to level. The stout never tastes of beer once it is baked: with light brown sugar and a good dose of cocoa it gives the crumb a dark, faintly malty depth and keeps it damp for days, while staying lighter than it looks. On top goes a thick vanilla cream cheese frosting, spread rather than piped, and a shower of grated chocolate — the pint with its head on, more or less.

Makes 2lb loaf (10 slices) · Prep 30 mins · Cook 50-60 mins · 13 ingredients · 12 steps

Ingredients

• 175g unsalted butter (or baking spread, at room temperature)
• 250g light brown soft sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 medium eggs
• 150ml Guinness
• 50g cocoa powder
• 250g self-raising flour
• 125ml whole milk
• 100g unsalted butter (block, at room temperature, for the frosting)
• 100g icing sugar (for the frosting)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (for the frosting)
• 200g full-fat soft cream cheese (for the frosting)
• 15g chocolate (grated, to decorate)

Method

Cake

1. Heat the oven. Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan and line a 2lb loaf tin with baking paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar. Beat the butter and light brown sugar together in a large bowl until soft, creamy and evenly combined.
3. Beat in the eggs. Add the vanilla and the eggs and beat again until smooth.
4. Add the Guinness. Pour in the Guinness and mix it through. The batter may look a little curdled at this point; the flour will bring it back together.
5. Add the dry ingredients. Add the cocoa powder and flour and mix just until no dry pockets remain.
6. Finish with the milk. Pour in the milk last and mix until the batter is smooth and glossy.
7. Bake the loaf. Scrape the batter into the tin, filling it no more than two-thirds full, and bake for 50-60 minutes, until a skewer pushed into the middle comes out clean.
8. Cool it completely. Leave it in the tin for 10 minutes, then lift it out onto a wire rack and let it cool all the way before it gets any frosting.

Frosting

9. Beat the butter and icing sugar. Beat the room-temperature block butter with the icing sugar until smooth and completely free of lumps.
10. Add the cream cheese. Tip off any liquid sitting on top of the cream cheese, then add it to the bowl with the vanilla.
11. Mix as little as possible. Stir just until it comes together and stop there — cream cheese frosting slackens the longer it is worked.
12. Frost and finish. Spread or pipe the frosting over the top of the cold loaf and grate the chocolate over it.

Good to know

• Loaf tins sold as 2lb vary a surprising amount in size. Fill yours two-thirds full at most and bake any spare batter as a few cupcakes rather than risk it rising over the edge.
• Any stout works in place of Guinness. For an alcohol-free cake, use the same 150ml of Guinness 0.0 or full-fat cola; most of the alcohol cooks off anyway, but either swap straight in.
• Light brown sugar is what gives the crumb its softness and the gentle toffee note. Caster or golden caster sugar both work; dark brown sugar pushes it towards treacle.
• Use a proper unsweetened cocoa powder, the stronger the better. Drinking chocolate is mostly sugar and bakes out tasting of very little.
• Whole milk rather than skimmed helps keep the batter from splitting.
• No self-raising flour? Use 250g plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder whisked through it first.
• The frosting is equal weights of butter and icing sugar beaten smooth before the cream cheese goes in, which is what keeps it thick when UK tub cream cheese would otherwise turn it runny. It needs block butter — a spread or margarine will not hold — and any lumps of cold butter will not beat out once the cheese is in. Block cream cheese, if you can find it, is even firmer.
• Medium eggs throughout. Two large eggs plus one extra yolk is a fair stand-in for three medium.
• For gluten-free, swap in a gluten-free self-raising flour and add ½ tsp xanthan gum if the blend does not already contain it. The sponge goes dairy-free easily; the cream cheese frosting does not, so a dairy-free buttercream is the safer topping.
• Unfrosted, the loaf keeps for 4-5 days in an airtight tin. Once frosted it must live in the fridge and is best within 2-3 days. It freezes, frosted or not, for up to 3 months — thaw it overnight in the fridge.