Chocolate Guinness Cake

I know what you're thinking..."Two blog posts in one day?!"  You must think I'm insane.  Baking two very different things in the very same day....does she have all the free time in the world?  Well, no, I don't (still have papers to write, etc), but I've been thinking about baking this cake for almost a week.  Last Sunday, I was talking to a friend of mine, and she mentioned a chocolate Guinness cake.  I don't remember exactly how it came up (probably related to the dessert menu at the bar she's planning on opening soon!), but it stuck in my head.  I was part skeptical and part intrigued.  I'm pretty sure I googled the recipe on my phone on my way home from dinner that night. 

I found this recipe by Nigella Lawson for the chocolate Guinness cake.  But she's British, and all of her ingredients/directions are British or by weight, or both.  Of course, she puts all of the conversions on her site, but remember that free time that I don't have much of?  So, yeah, I didn't want to do all of the conversions.  I stumbled upon another blog that I sometimes visit, and they had Nigella's cake but - miracle of miracles - it had "normal" measurements.  So I made that one...

I love how the white icing on top of the dark choclate cake is supposed to look like a frothy head of foam on top of a pint of Guinness (similar to the white chocolate ganache on top of the cappuccino brownies I made recently that is meant to look like the milk foam on top of a steamy mug of cappuccino).  I think this cake would be absolutely adorable as cupcakes.  I might even be tempted to take off the cupcake papers and stick them into glass cups to make them really look like a "glass of Guinness."