How to soothe a noisy, anxious mind by baking with a solitary can of Guinness and enticing hint of learning a trick of the trade with mascarpone.

Anna Haugh and her Guinness Chocolate Cake, from her debut book Cooking with Anna

I woke up yesterday morning feeling untethered. Slightly anxious and not able to settle. There was no way out of this. I had to cook – no, correction, I needed to bake. I needed to ground myself with precision, weighing, measuring and the concentration and skill in following precise instructions. You need to be accurate when baking and I wanted to embrace this solace and create something new to sooth the intrusive negative noises in my head.

So, I was intrigued when I listened Gilly Smith’s Cooking the Books latest episode with Anna Haugh and her debut cookbook, Cooking with Anna. Celebrating modern Irish home cooking; cooking from the heart, cooking with love and connection to life. This resonated with me. I was hooked with her recipe for Guinness Chocolate Cake and knew this was a cake I needed to make. And is how I like to cook – words like ‘crazy easy’, ‘stays fresh in the fridge for three days’, ‘you can make it well in advance as both the sponge and cream freeze well’.  Anna was so singing my OCD time management song!

Hooked, enchanted, addicted and I was ready to get connected. And grounded. A cake that gets you ahead of the game!

I had one can of Guinness, as you do, destined for a steak pie, sitting lonely in amongst tins of pantry staples chopped tomatoes, butter beans, chickpeas, miso and harissa. Don’t you hate it when find that you have the inspiration to make something and then fall at the last hurdle because you don’t have the key ingredients. The stars were aligned, universe was with me and I had everything I needed – ah, checking the ingredients list, except buttermilk. 

Now Anna talks a lot about Buttermilk in this episode – it is very Irish. Nutritious, full of good gut bacteria, a natural probiotic.  But I did not have any. But you can make your own version at home. And there are lots of variations on the recipe, which does save you time and money, and I add, on that unnecessary trip to the supermarket.

So all you need is equal parts of Greek yogurt and milk, say 200ml of each, mix together and, voila, you have buttermilk. The other option 250 ml milk and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.  

So I had all that was needed. All ingredients ready, I was calm and meditative, slowly getting organised so that the method just flows. Scanning the recipe processes, as I always do, making my superpower time shortcuts, while I was waiting for the Guinness to reduce, I assembled all the dried ingredients together. Then made my buttermilk, set aside and gathered together the wet ingredients. I was good to go.

But one final thought. And that is on perfection. Could I make this cake and present it like Anna’s above? Does it need to be perfect? Sometimes it is impossible to make the perfect food shot. But sometimes working with food is like working with animals and children - unpredictable. This cake is an example – so I wanted to share some behind the scenes shots of each process. Real life.

The slice is clearly not as neat as the one with Anna’s shot. But it is real.  Sponge soft, paper thin, darkly dense chocolate, threaded with bitter scent of Guinness, soft vanilla, minute microdots of black seeds, scenting the aromatic cream, thickened with sour note of buttermilk and the airy, earthy magic of mascarpone. I ate spoonfuls, it was so good. So layered together, it is not a work of art as you can see, there are cracks, just like life, but a work of love. Lots of trial slices but this thick one is the best of the bunch. Even the sharpest knife was not going to make a clean, smudge free cut. Leave that to the food stylist. This is good homemade cake, that does exactly as the recipe says- looks like it, tastes like it and the rest has gone into the freezer.

So this is what you need. Recipe below is taken directly from Extra Bites, Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith. Enjoy the process. And the trade secret at the end.

Serves 10–12

For the sponge

500g Guinness (I used a 440ml can – it was all I had)

125g unsalted butter, plus more for the tins

140g plain flour

200g caster sugar

35g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

pinch of fine sea salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

75g buttermilk ( I made my own version with equal parts of Greek yogurt and whole milk)

For the cream

300g double cream

60g icing sugar

50g buttermilk

30g mascarpone ****

1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out

Place a saucepan under an extraction fan, pour in the Guinness and set over a high heat. Reduce to half the quantity (250g). Set aside to cool. Melt the butter in a pan, then leave it to cool.

Butter 2 swiss roll tins, each about 30 × 20cm, and line the bases with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 160°C fan.

Place the flour, sugar, cocoa, bicarb, baking powder and salt in a bowl, whisk to mix, then make a well in the centre. Add 125g of the Guinness reduction with the cooled melted butter, egg and buttermilk and whisk the batter until no lumps are left.

Divide the mixture between the 2 prepared tins, then bake for 10 minutes. Insert a metal skewer into the centre: when it emerges, it should be clean; also the sponge should bounce back to the touch. It should be just cooked, rather than overcooked. The mix is wet and you really need to use a metal skewer to check it’s done in the centre. Leave in the tins to cool, then put a rack over the tins and turn them out. Leave until cold, then chill. The sponge needs to be chilled when you’re cutting it to assemble the cake.

Tricks of the trade – love this from Anna and it really does work

Adding mascarpone to double cream is an amazing tip given to me by a fantastic pastry chef, Rey (Hortillosa) Encarnacion from the Conrad Hotel in Dublin. When you add mascarpone to whipped cream, it never loses its air and is less likely to split.

Halve both chilled cakes widthways, then trim the sponges so you have 4 matching flat layers that will sit neatly on top of each other.

Whip together the cream, icing sugar, buttermilk, mascarpone and vanilla seeds to soft peaks (see below). Use this to sandwich the cake layers together. Serve in slices, so you see the layers.