Ok - so I wrote this wonderful long post about a giant snow storm we had here in Chicago, and the fabulous loaf of bread that I made with it - but that was months ago now, and officially posted it. So, if you see something about a storm and bread in a few weeks - it is brand new material! I promise! (insert "fingers crossed" emotocon here... do they even have one of those?)

So for a long while now I had been looking for an excuse to try out a Chocolate Guinness Cake recipe I found on Nigella.com. I found it - St. Patrick's day!

I wanted to give you a few pointers... the first one is to be sure to use a big enough pot to mix this all in... once you add the flour and baking soda, the whole thing triples in size. Secondly, make sure to mix the baking soda in with your flour before you mix it into the Chocolate gooyness. I tried to cut corners and it almost blew up in my face... literally. Mind you this wouldn't have been a problem if I had had a bigger pan.

So, one last thing, I forgot to take a photo. Yes, I know. I was so excited to bite in that I didn't realize the fact the last minute when I had already started packing the 'leftovers' to bring to the office. Sorry, you should check out Nigella's photo - it's a beautiful cake! (Link at the bottom or the page.)

Enough talking, here is the recipe:

FOR THE CAKE

• 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

FOR THE TOPPING:

• 300g Philadelphia cream cheese
• 150g icing sugar
• 125ml double or whipping cream

Method

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.
4. When the cake's cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the icing. Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and then beat them both together. Or do this in a processor, putting the unsieved icing sugar in first and blitz to remove lumps before adding the cheese.
5. Add the cream and beat again until it makes a spreadable consistency. Ice the top of the black cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.

Serves: Makes about 12 slices

Recipe posted by Nigella: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/chocolate-guinness-cake-3086