Chocolate Guinness Cake... oh my!

I did mention here that I was just waiting for the opportunity to make the Chocolate & Guinness Cake from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book and I am very pleased to say that I made it last weekend. We had been invited to some friends' for Sunday lunch and I took this cake (with red velvet cupcakes for the kids... this is a decidedly grown up cake!)

Melting the butter into the guinness was an odd moment - again, I used margarine and I was worried it wouldn't work - it just looks a bit wrong! But, as soon as I added the next lot of ingredients - as you can see - it all came together and the lovely, glossy, desired batter materialised.

As far as the baking goes, my cake came out with a ginormous crack in it and the cake was a little bit dense toward the bottom - as though it was so moist yet huge, that the cake couldn't withstand its own weight and squashed a little. The cream cheese frosting disguised the crack with no problem and the texture didn't affect the eating at all - it was delicious. I was happy to serve this up to our friends and they were happy to eat it! It seemed positive all round.

I will definitely make this again - it was so rich, and moist, and just downright decadent!
The best part of all was that it was SO big that we left a quarter of it with our friends and dropped the other two quarters round to two different friends' houses on the way home. This prompted a facebook discussion on the subject of this cake and I have now promised to make it for a few more friends. I topped mine with a dusting of cocoa powder and some dark chocolate chunks.