You might not think stout would be good in a cake but combine it with grapefruit, orange, and cocoa and you get a moist, dense cake that’s not too sweet. The Grand Marnier cream cheese frosting adds just the right amount of sugar to make Citrus Chocolate Stout Cake a perfect dessert

When I think of St. Patrick’s Day, I think of shamrocks, Irish songs, Irish stew, potatoes, cabbage and, of course, green beer. I’m not much of a beer fan. In fact, I don’t like beer at all and I especially don’t like dark beers. But I was intrigued when my friend Julianne over at Beyond Frosting made a Chocolate Stout Cake that looked out of this world.

Julianne’s cake required chocolate stout. We don’t have much of a beer selection here in Cambodia so there was no chance of incorporating chocolate stout into a cake but I did find Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Guinness Cake recipe and a chocolate orange Guinness cake recipe. Julianne’s cake looked much more moist but I liked the idea of adding some citrus to balance the beer flavor. So I decided to take the best parts of both recipes for this one.

The chocolate orange Guinness recipe said that using Seville oranges complemented the stout better than regular oranges. While there is a ton of fruit here in Cambodia, I’ve not seen Seville oranges and Cambodian oranges are much sweeter than American ones. They’re so sweet that tourists often think Cambodian orange juice is an artificial fruit drink. Since the local oranges are too sweet and I opted for grapefruit instead.

Flavorings are also difficult to find here in Cambodia but hard liquor is abundant and some liquors make excellent flavorings.  I’ve made my own vanilla but there was no chance of finding orange extract here. I substituted Grand Marnier for vanilla to give my Citrus Chocolate Stout Cake a bit more citrus punch. Lastly, I reduced the sugar in the frosting and added a teaspoon of Grand Marnier to that as well. You can use orange extract instead of Grand Marnier.

Then came the beer. I didn’t see Guinness on my first trip to the grocery store but I was surprised to find a local stout called Black Panther. It was $0.70 per can so the price was right. I looked it up on Rate my Beer and their experts gave Black Panther pretty mediocre scores for a stout. Since I had no intention of drinking it, I figured it was OK for cooking. Citrus Chocolate Stout Cake might come out even better with a good stout but I wouldn’t know a good stout from a bad one anyway.

My springform pan is just under 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter. The recipe calls for a 9 inch springform pan. Since I was worried the batter would overflow the smaller pan, I put most of the batter in my large springform pan and put the rest in a 4 inch springform pan – big mistake. I could have put all of the batter in my 8 inch pan and it would have been fine. The 4 inch pan over flowed and made a mess. It did give me a chance to taste-test the cake before the large one was done but I need to clean my oven today.

Citrus Chocolate Stout Cake

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Ingredients

Citrus Chocolate Stout Cake

• 1 cup Guinness stout
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter
• ¾ cup unsweetened cocoa
• 2 ¼ cups sugar
• ¾ cup sour cream
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 ½ teaspoons baking soda
• Grated rind of 1 grapefruit

Grand Marnier Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
• ½ cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon Grand Marnier

Instructions

1. Butter a 9-inch spring form pan and line with parchment paper. In a large saucepan, combine stout and butter. Place over medium-low heat until butter melts, then remove from heat. Add cocoa and sugar, and whisk to blend.
2. In a small bowl, combine sour cream, eggs and Grand Marnier; mix well. Add to stout mixture. Add flour and baking soda, and whisk again until smooth. Pour into buttered spring form pan, and bake at 350° F 45 minutes to one hour. Cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Place pan on a wire rack and cool completely in pan.
3. Remove cake from pan and place on a platter or cake stand. Ice top of cake only. Garnish with candied grapefruit peel.

Grand Marnier Cream Cheese Frosting

1. Put cream cheese in a bowl and sift confectioners' sugar on top. Blend until smooth. Add heavy cream and Grand Marnier, and mix until smooth and spreadable.

If you like this, you will also like this decadent chocolate stout cake from Beyond Frosting.

Or these Guiness Stout Chocolate Brownies from ATreatsAffair