Baking Chocolate Guinness Cake

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake (from FEAST) is made using a method that involves melting the sugar, butter and Guinness together and then adding the other ingredients. This is a similar method to a sticky gingerbread cake and usually gives a very moist cake. If the cake is slightly dry then it is most likely that the cake was baked for slightly too long. The cake should be baked until the top is firm to the touch and a cake tester inserted to the centre comes just out clean or with a couple of damp crumbs clinging to it. This can take 45 minutes to 1 hour, as ovens vary, so start checking after 45 minutes. The cake should be baked in the centre of the oven if it is a conventional oven and it could be worth checking the oven temperature with an oven thermometer as oven thermostats can become less reliable over time. The oven temperature may also need to be adjusted if you are uing a fan oven.

The icing is made with cream cheese and double cream and some of the cream cheese now sold in tubs seems to be slightly softer spreading. This can make the icing less thick, so if you wish to thicken it beat in 1 teaspoon cornflour (cornstarch) per 100g cream cheese before adding the icing sugar.