Guinness Chocolate Cake with Caramel and Guinness Ganache
This Guinness Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Guinness Ganache is a soft, tender chocolate beer cake topped with a generous amount of salted caramel sauce and Guinness ganache!
Preheat oven to 325°. Butter the inside of a large bundt pan or 48 mini bundt pans with softened butter. I like to use a brush to get in all the crevices. Then coat the inside with Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder. Set aside.
Combine cocoa, chocolate and espresso powder in a large bowl. Bring Guinness to just barely boiling in a small saucepan. Pour hot Guinness over chocolate mixture and whisk until completely melted and smooth. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
While the chocolate is cooling, combine flour, salt, and baking soda together in a small bowl and whisk.
When chocolate is cool, whisk in the sour cream.
Beat the butter sugar and vanilla together in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. The batter may seem separated and that is okay!
Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture in three additions. Alternate flour with chocolate mixture, beginning and ending with flour.
Scoop batter into cupcake liners or prepared pans. Bake until a toothpick comes out with some crumbs still attached; 10-15 minutes.
Let the cupcakes cool completely.
For the Guinness Ganache:
Place chocolate in a heat-proof bowl. Bring heavy cream to a boil on stovetop and pour over chocolate, whisking vigorously until the chocolate has melted and is smooth. If it is not completely smooth at this point, don’t worry, just proceed to the next step.
Bring Guinness to a boil in the same small saucepan. Pour over chocolate mixture and whisk until completely smooth.
Let cool to room temperature, and if it is still too runny, place it in the refrigerator. Check on it at 5 minute intervals, whisking to check consistency. Sounds silly but once it gets too cold, all you can do is wait for it to warm up.
I have found that the best consistency to apply a ganache to a cake is when it will slowly run off your whisk.