Its hard to make a manly fairy cake, so when faced with the challenge for a recent birthday party, I knew beer had to come into it somehow. I had recently bought Nigellas 'FEAST" which has a whole section on cakes, so I flicked through looking for inspiration, and there it was, a recipe for a Guinness cake! Beyond manly if you ask me, Guinness puts hairs on the chests of women! Nigellas recipe was for a cake, but its easy to adjust for fairy cakes, I usually just add a bit more flour if the batter is very damp, a cake can cope with a moist interior but a fairy cake? Not so much...OH they were delicious!! So easy too! I love that!
Iced with philly cream cheese icing and they looked like little pints sitting there! I only wish i had taken the time to ice little harps on each - that would have been sweet!
Here is the recipe from Nigella Lawsons book, I might substitute the guinness for flavoured ale next time and see what happens!
Chocolate Guinness Cake
You'll need
250ml Guinness
250gm unsalted butter
75gm cocoa (I use Green and Blacks!)
400gm caster sugar
75gm cocoa (I use Green and Blacks!)
400gm caster sugar
142ml sour cream
2 eggs
1 tbsp real vanilla extract
325gm plain flour
2 and a 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs
1 tbsp real vanilla extract
325gm plain flour
2 and a 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Method
Get your oven nice and hot, around 180oc, and prepare a tray with your cake cases.
Pour the Guinness into a large pan, add the butter in cubes, and heat until melted. Stir in the cocoa and sugar. Don't worry about lumps unless they're massive! Remove from the heat and in a separate bowl beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and pour into the beer mix in the pan and finally whisk in the bicarb and flour. I left mine stand for a while, then filled the cases in my usual way (wondering is it enough, will it overflow, dropping a blob in the middle of the tray, and on the floor, all accompanied by a varying degree of my favorite curse words, most inherited from my mother, including the wonderful "sugery shite"...)
Bake for a snip of ten minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and pop onto a wire tray to cool completely before icing with a mix of 200gms Philidelphia cream cheese, 120mls double cream and 400gms icing sugar.
8 comments:
These look so yummy and your photos are beautiful!
Thanks Emily! My lovely camera got damaged when we were away so I've been using a little cheap one and its very frustrating - so thanks for the encouragement!
Cheap camera or not, those still look yumm! I finally got a decent camera, the little ones broke my old one, and I am really enjoying looking at others photos for inspiration.
I am a huge sucker for cream cheese icing!
How interesting to use beer in cake. But what is a Fairy cake???
A cupcake, we use both names here, I usually say cupcake actually - I hadn't noticed that the fairy cakes of my childhood had demanded recognition here!
How funny!
Oh, LOVELY!
Some of the best brownies I've ever made included Guinness in the ingredient list. So, no doubt these were fabulously delicious!
Ah! Lo! I need that recipe!
Brilliant! I love that they look like little pints of Guinness.
And I've never called them anything but Fairy Cakes... :-)
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