Nigella's chocolate guinness cake

I made this cake yesterday for my future brother-in-law's birthday. I have made it before yet this time I encountered a few problems...all self inflicted. Firstly, because one time I made it, the cake was huge and sagged in the middle and didn't look too pretty, I decided to not put as much batter in the cake tin to make a smaller, unsagged one. However, when it came out the oven, it was, er, tiny. Too small! I thought, I can't use this for a birthday cake! I'd used the rest of the batter up on cupcakes too so the only other option was to bake another layer. So I did, but halved the recipe.

So far, so good... Then I start to make the icing. I'd only got low fat cream cheese - bad idea Helen! It was so runny and watery because the cream cheese was watery. Terrible. It wouldn't thicken up no matter how much icing sugar I put in or how long I beat it for. So I gave up on that...

Then, we're in a rush to get it to my Sister's. The second layer of the cake isn't quite cooled enough, but I'm in a rush and my Mum is on my back too to get it done! So I move it ontop of the first layer after icing it...and it cracks. In half. Well, not perfectly in half, more like in a 1/3, but it was huge. I tried to keep it together. My Mum suggested I put more icing on it...but that makes it worse! Next thing I know it looks like the grand canyon with pure white icing seeping down it.

It wasn't as big a disaster as it sounds though! Honest! As you can see from the photos, it looked half decent and managed to stay in one piece, kind of. None of it fell off or anything anyway. Of course, the most important thing is the taste, and the word on the street is that it was delicious and went down very well.

The recipe is available here and even if you don't like Guinness, you should try this cake. It's a deliciusly moist, tangy deep chocolate cake. Hmmm.