Chocolate Guinness birthday cake

I like birthday cakes. I like making them and I like getting them. I can still remember a butterfly cake my mum made for one of my birthdays years ago (I don’t remember the age, but I’m sure we’re talking single digits). It may have required a special pan, or just some fancy cutting, but the cake was complete with butterfly body and wings, which were colourfully decorated in candy and icing. I think there were licorice antennae too. It may not have won any Martha Stewart awards for finesse, but it was pretty fancy for Lakefield in the seventies. And hey, that was the era before Martha Stewart, so her opinion didn’t matter anyway.

There’s something cheering about a homemade birthday cake, even if it has a sloping top and the icing isn’t quite perfectly spread. Cakes made from scratch don’t look as pretty as their bakery-shop cousins, but that’s kind of the point, right? When someone goes to the trouble to mix up carefully selected ingredients, gently pours batter into pans, then frets as the cake rises and the edges brown, it means they’ve thought about you, and they’ve put time and effort into creating something that’s essentially meant to celebrate you.

That’s why I was happy to be able to make a birthday cake for my dad in September. I chose a Guinness chocolate cake for the occasion. The cake is a nice combination of chocolate — and yes beer — that results in a dense and damp concoction. This is not your light and fluffy Duncan Hines cake. And best of all, it’s remarkably simple to make. Or is the best part the leftover Guinness? Either way, win win.

Crack open a can and get started...

Melt the beer and butter in a pan.

And measure out your cocoa.

Mix up the eggs and sour cream (or yoghurt as I substituted).

Mix all together until you get this gooey mess.

And here's the baked cake. It's really moist -- and quite heavy too!

And here's the birthday guy enjoying the cake, with the world's most pathetic candle ever on top!

But this slice is looking a bit better with some raspberries and cream. Bake one for your next birthday!

Chocolate Guinness cake
from Nigella Lawson's Feast

•250ml Guinness
•250g unsalted butter
•75g cocoa
•400g caster sugar
•1 x 142ml pot sour cream
•2 eggs
•1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
•275g plain flour
•2 1/2teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

1.Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin.

2.Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter - in spoons or slices - and heat until the butter's melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.

3.Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.