Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Cake Is My Favorite Chocolate Cake of All Time

This cake’s deep, dark vibes make it especially well suited for grown-ups.

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I’ve got a few chocolate cake recipes that I keep up my sleeve for different occasions, and Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Guinness Cake is my favorite of them all. I serve when I have my girlfriends over for a late night catch-up, after all of our kids are asleep. I’ll make the cake the night before, and then right before I’m expecting guests, when my littles are safely tucked away in their beds, I whip up the fluffy cream cheese frosting to top the cake.

This cake’s deep, dark vibes make it especially well suited for grown-ups—Nigella always comes through with sensuous, diabolically enjoyable desserts. This cake is, after all, designed to resemble a pint of beer, complete with a fluffy white head. (For the cocoa powder in the batter, I love to use Dutch-process cocoa for a midnight black cake.)

Read More: Dutch-Process vs. Natural Cocoa Powder: An Expert Explains the Difference

Is Chocolate Guinness Cake Kid-Friendly?

By the time the beer is baked into the cake there’s really not much alcohol to speak of. However, if you are serving kids or non-drinkers and want to be extra cautious, any dark cola would make a good substitute.

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Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake Is Perfect for Beginner Bakers

While the flavor of this chocolate and Guinness cake is what makes it most special, so does the way it’s made. It’s very, very easy to put together, even for a beginner baker. It’s meant to be a dense, moist cake, so there’s no delicate egg white whipping or careful folding required. Rather, you heat up the beer and butter in a big saucepan until the butter is melted, then whisk in the remaining ingredients.

Nigella recommends using a greased, parchment-lined nine-inch springform cake pan, and I would definitely stick with that. It makes the moist, sticky cake release from the pan easily. 

Once you’ve sprung the pan open, you can place a large plate or cake platter upside down on the cake, flip it over, then remove the bottom of the pan and the parchment paper. No difficult acrobatics or precarious unmolding, please and thank you. Can you tell I’m a slightly impatient baker? 

The hardest part of the recipe is waiting for the cake to cool entirely before unmolding. It needs a good two hours or so to get down to room temperature. To get around this waiting, I bake it the night before I’m going to serve it, let it cool overnight, then put plastic wrap over the pan in the morning and let it be until I’m ready to frost it.

If you have any leftovers (it is a large, substantial cake), store tightly wrapped in the fridge, then let the slices sit out at room temp for an hour or so before serving, if you can stand to wait. 

Read More: How to Line Cake and Loaf Pans with Parchment

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Nigella’s Major Recipe Upgrade

I love how Nigella always includes at least one why-didn’t-I-think-of-that trick in her recipes. In this one, the beer gets top billing and adds what she refers to as a “ferrous tang.” However, I think the even more genius trick is adding heavy cream in the frosting. It takes what would otherwise be a basic cream cheese topping and makes it lighter, fluffier, and more mellow in flavor. It’s the ideal topping for a beautifully dense cake. 

How To Serve Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake

This cake is great all on its own and needs nothing else. If you do decide to forego the frosting, give it a generous sprinkle of powdered sugar or add a scoop of vanilla ice cream. And if you’d like to pair it with a drink, little glasses of port or sherry go very well. 

Get Recipe with Title: https://www.nigella.com/recipes/chocolate-guinness-cake

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