Nigella's chocolate Guinness cake + Baileys cream cheese frosting

I recall a colleague making a chocolate Guinness cake at a previous work event and it generated a lot of interest; so I decided to have a go at baking one for my charity cake sale a couple of weeks ago. 

I Googled around for a recipe and found this one by Nigella which seemed to have got rave reviews ... Nigella also describes it on her blog as "magnificent in its dark majesty", which sounded pretty tempting to me.

I made the cake exactly according to Nigella's recipe, but I adjusted the frosting slightly as I wanted to incorporate Baileys, and I also wanted a classic cream cheese frosting (whereas Nigella's includes cream - some reviewers said it was a bit runny).

Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake (with Pauline's Baileys cream cheese frosting)

From Nigella's website - also featured in Feast

Ingredients:
250 ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa powder
400g caster sugar
142 ml sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the frosting:
300g cream cheese
150g icing sugar
A good glug of Baileys

Equipment:
1 * 9" (23cm) springform or loose-bottomed cake tin.

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 160C (fan)/Gas mark 4; and grease and line the cake tin.
2. Pour the Guinness into a large saucepan, add the butter and heat until the butter melts.

3. Then whisk in the cocoa powder and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla in a separate bowl and then pour in to the butter mixture. Finally whisk in the flour and bicarb of soda.

4. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 45-60 minutes.

5. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.

6. Whip the cream cheese until smooth, then beat in the sieved icing sugar. Add the Baileys to taste and beat until light and frothy. Spread over the top of the cold cake.

Observations:
This cake was easy to make, but I didn't get on too well with beating everything together in the pan - I actually transferred my beery mixture into my K Mix stand mixer bowl before beating in the rest of the ingredients. I also found that it needed a good hour to bake.

I changed the icing and have to admit that it went rather runny so didn't look the best ... though that is not the reason why there is no picture of the iced cake. As the icing was dairy I took it to work in a cool bag to spread on the cake immediately before serving in my cake sale ... and people were queueing up to sample a slice so I never got chance to take a photo!  I never got to taste this cake at all, but the feedback was very complimentary with one colleague describing it as "exceptional", so it appears to have turned out alright!

Hugs,