Guinness Chocolate Mini Cake

You know what's frustrating? When you have the perfect idea and everything goes great, and you get so excited that its going to be complete and utter awesomeness and then its time for the finale and it goes straight to hell. Well, at least presentation-wise? Yeah, welcome to my baking adventures this past weekend.

I had some leftover Guinness from my St. Pattys Day shindig and since I try not to drink much booze while marathon training, I decided to use some in a cake recipe instead! (I can swear off booze, but I can't swear off sugar... interesting, huh?).

I bought these cute little mini-pans ages ago and have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them. Well, that opportunity presented itself this weekend, when I had a chocolate craving and nobody in town to share a cake with.

I decided to use Ina Garten's Beatty Cake recipe that I printed out ages ago and instead of using hot coffee in the recipe... I'd use Guinness... Guinness in cake, you say? Brilliant! (I couldnt resist).

I ended up quartering the recipe. Which turned out to fit perfectly in the three little cake pans. They were each 4 inch cake pans. As they were baking, I was trying to decide what type of frosting I wanted to use... I decided I wanted something creamy and chocolatey, but that I'd also like to use some Guinness in the frosting as well. So.... I decided to adapt a cream cheese frosting recipe into a chocolate cream cheese guinness frosting. Yes, you read that right.... Chocolate. Cream Cheese. Guinness. Frosting. Oh my.

So, you can see where the excitement came from. I was so excited to taste this chocolately, booze-y, decadence in cake form... that I didn't even consider the fact that the cake was actually taller than it was round (since it was in petite form) or doing a crumb coat with the frosting and then chilling the cake in the fridge for a bit. Noooooo Sir... I immedately went to frosting that whole blame cake eagerly awaiting the moment that I could slice into it and produce the most beautiful tantilizing piece O' cake you've ever seen.

And thats when this happened.

The whole thing basically fell completely apart. Into a giant chocolatey mess on my maternal Step Grandfather's first wives China.

Sigh. At least it tasted brilliant! Soooooooooo delicious once chilled and the flavors melded. Yum. I will definitely make this in regular size at some point.

Cake Recipe follow exactly, except instead of 1 cup of Hot coffee use 1 cup of Guinness. I also used Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa.

Guinness Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8oz package of cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2tbsps Cocoa
2 tbsp Guinness
1 16 oz package of powdered sugar

Beat cream cheese and butter at low speed until creamy. Add vanilla, cocoa, and guinness and beat till mixed. Slowly add powdered sugar until creamy and fluffy.