Name: Chocolate Stout Cake
Cook time: 30 minutes
Total time: 3 hours 20 minutes
Yield: 16–20 servings
Ingredients: 2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter, plus more for pans; 2 cups stout (such as Guinness); 1½ cups Dutch-process cocoa powder; 4 cups (500 g) all-purpose flour; 4 cups (800 g) sugar; 1 Tbsp. baking soda; 1½ tsp. Diamond Crystal or 1 tsp. Morton kosher salt; 4 large eggs; 1⅓ cups sour cream; 2 cups heavy cream; 16 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped

A slice of chocolate stout cake on a dessert plate with a fork.

Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Stevie Stewart

The secret to unbelievably moist, robustly flavored chocolate cake? It’s beer. This chocolate stout cake recipe abides by the principle that when making a chocolaty dessert, adding a complementary ingredient helps the chocolate shine. For example, adding espresso powder to brownies deepens their flavor without necessarily leaving a distinguishable trace of coffee. In this recipe for chocolate stout cake, the beer serves a similar purpose.

Stout, such as Guinness, adds intense moisture to the cake’s layers and offsets the dessert’s sweetness with a touch of bitterness. For the deepest chocolate flavor, use Dutch-process cocoa powder, which is less acidic than natural cocoa. The result is supremely rich but balanced cake, layered with a silky, fudgy chocolate ganache.

This exemplary Guinness chocolate cake recipe comes from Barrington Brewery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where it’s been a mainstay for years. It yields three layers of cake—enough to make a towering layer cake or a two-layer cake plus a batch of cupcakes.