The savory quality that the Guinness brings to this Chocolate Stout Cake allows for the Irish Cream Buttercream and Whiskey Caramel drizzle to shine! It also keeps it from being overly sweet, which means you can even pair a slice of this cake with a pint of Guinness. That makes this cake good any time of year, but it is a favorite of mine for finishing off an Irish Feast on St. Patrick's Day.
Making Chocolate Stout Cake
Making this cake requires the usual suspect of ingredients. Flour, butter, eggs, vanilla, oh, and chocolate of course. But one ingredient that you want to be specific about is the stout. You want to use the Guinness foreign EXTRA stout.
It has a deeper flavor and you want all the flavor you can get for this cake. All the other ingredients will dull the flavor of the beer, so be sure to get the extra stout. Many liquor stores and most grocery stores sell them by the bottle if you don't want to have extra to drink, 1 bottle is all you will need for this cake.
To make the cake, begin by creaming soft butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and beat until well combined. Then you want to beat the vanilla and chocolate into the batter. You do this at this point because fat carries flavor and adding these ingredients now will permeate the cake.
Beat the chocolate into the batter until it looks like pudding or mousse. Whipping it into the batter and aerating it. Scrape the bowl down, and beat again until smooth. Then add in the beer and dry ingredients and blend just until no flour streaks remain.
Place the cake batter in a prepared 8-inch cake tin. I chose this size so the cake would be substantial when frosted. Bake until the cake is set and a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. When the cake is done, cool it in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove it from the tin and allow it to cool completely on the rack.
Making the Irish Cream Buttercream & frosting the cake
This is a super simple straight-forward buttercream frosting. Simply place all the ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer and beat them together with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy.
Be careful when making this to just beat it until it gets slightly pale. If you overbeat the buttercream it can split and become grainy. Just whip it till the cocoa powder goes from dark to light.
Swirl the frosting over the top of the cake. Plop it all on top and using the back of a spoon swirl it around on the cake, that is how you get those pretty swoops that the caramel is puddled in. I make my Homemade Caramel Sauce and finish it with some Irish Whiskey to use with this cake.
Finish the cake off with a healthy drizzle of whiskey caramel and you are ready to serve. I even serve each slice with a little extra drizzle. You just can't get enough of this caramel.
More Irish recipes
If you can't tell by the list below I love me some Irish food. It's the food of my people, and I love working through recipes from authentic traditions, to ones that may have changed when they came to America.
Brown Butter Cake with Irish Whiskey Cream Sauce
📖 Recipe
Chocolate Stout Cake with Irish Cream Buttercream
If you are looking for something magically delicious for St. Patrick’s Day, let this be the cake of your dreams for that celebration.
Ingredients
for the cake:
- 8 tablespoons Unsalted Butter
- ¾ cup Granulated Sugar
- ½ cup Brown Sugar
- 2 lg Eggs, room temp
- 4 oz Dark Chocolate, melted
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
- ½ teaspoon Kosher Salt
- 1 ½ cup All-Purpose Flour
- 1 cup Guinness Foreign Extra Stout
for the buttercream:
- 4 tablespoons Unsalted Butter, soft but not melted
- 1 cup Powdered Sugar
- 1 tablespoon Cocoa Powder
- 2 tablespoons Irish cream, Five Farms is my favorite
Instructions
for the cake:
- Grease an 8-inch cake pan and line with parchment paper.
- Preheat the oven to 350˚F.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugars until pale and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating until fully combined between additions.
- Beat the chocolate and vanilla into the mixture, until fully incorporated.
- Add the baking soda, salt, flour, and stout to the bowl. Beat on the lowest setting until the flour is incorporated, then whack up the mixer to high for 5 seconds, then turn it back off. Your cake should be perfectly mixed, if any flour or anything else remains on the sides of the bowl fold them in with a spatula.
- Place the cake batter into the prepared pan and bake for 50-55 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack and allow it to cool completely.
- Place on a cake stand or plate and frost with Irish Cream Buttercream
for the buttercream:
- Combine all of the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
- Beat on low until the ingredients are combined, then turn the mixer up to medium and beat for 2 minutes until the mixture gets slightly pale. Be careful not to over mix or your mixture may split. If this happens add an extra tablespoon of powdered sugar and a tablespoon of cold heavy cream. Swirl the buttercream on top of the cooled cake.
Notes
Finish the cake with a drizzle of caramel if desired, I make THIS RECIPE and add a shot of Irish whiskey at the very end.
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