Chocolate Guinness Cake from Nigella Lawson!

On my drive to work today, I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR.  Host Renee Montagne interviewed British chef and cookbook author Nigella Lawson about two St. Patrick's Day recipes: an adapted version of Irish Stew and Chocolate Guinness Cake.  Both recipes can be found by following the link above.  I'm including the cake recipe in this post (follow the program link for Irish Stew), just because.

Montange notes, "Lawson's Chocolate Guinness Cake comes loaded with sugar, chocolate and a cream cheese frosting that recalls the foamy head of a pint. 'If you think of stout and what it has--which is an almost licorice intensity--when you mix it with chocolate, it gives it more complexity,' Lawson says.  'It's a grown-up cake.'"

CHOCOLATE GUINNESS CAKE by Nigella Lawson
Ingredients for cake:

1 cup Guinness
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups superfine sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Ingredients for the topping:

8 oz Philadelphia cream cheese
1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream

Preheat the over to 350 F, and butter and line a 9 inch springform pan.

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

When the cake's cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the frosting. Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sift over the confectioner's sugar and then beat them both together. Or do this in a processor, putting the unsifted confectioners' sugar in first and blitz to remove lumps before adding the cheese.
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.

Makes about 12 slices

Recipe and Photo Credit: From Feast by Nigella Lawson. Photographs by James Merrell. Copyright 2004 Nigella Lawson. Photographs Copyright 2004 by James Merrell. Published by Hyperion. All Rights Reserved.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124611065#124614775