Chocolate Guinness Cake Pops - Celebrate St Patrick's Day

I confess, I've never made a cake pop in my life before (although I've eaten a fair few!).  I was inspired by A Mummy Too's post last week with a brilliant tutorial - that and the rising panic when I realised I'd promised Ruby cake pops for her party bags next week.  So it was time for a trial run.

Flicking through Nigella's Feast recipe book (one of my all time favourites), I stumbled upon her recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake, so decided to give that a whirl for St Patrick's Day.

The cake came out incredibly well, I was so chuffed with it.  Rich, dense and moist, almost like a fudge cake, but with the iron rich twang of the black stuff.

It was so moist and dense, it molded perfectly in my hands to form cake balls, without the need to add and frosting at all.

I would suggest halving the quantities Nigella uses - it makes a beast of a cake.  About one quarter of it made me 9 cake pops!  So here it is, roughly halved, just use a smaller cake tin say around 7 inches. I'd also add that I had no sour cream, so instead I used a combination of milk and cream cheese, and it seemed to work well.

Cake Ingredients:

125 ml Guinness

125g  unsalted butter

35g cocoa powder

200g caster sugar

75 ml sour cream

1 large egg

1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

160g plain flour

1 large teaspoon bicarb of soda

Decorating Ingredients & Equipment:

1 pack green candy melts (available in baking stores, hobby shops or online)

20 cake pop sticks

green sprinkles (I found shamrocks on ebay)

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C/350ºF, and butter and line a 23cm / 9 inch springform tin.

2. Pour the Guinness into a large saucepan, add the butter in cubes and heat until the butter's melted. Then whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the buttery beer and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.

3. Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack.

      

     Head over to Emily's blog for full details on how to make up the cake pops from here if you haven't made them before, but remember, you won't need frosting with this cake.

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