Could I Use Alcohol-Free Guinness For The Chocolate Guinness Cake?

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake (from FEAST) is a damp, rich cake made with Guinness stout. The Guinness provides a slightly ferrous background flavour to the cake, as well as adding liquid to help to make the cake moist. The slight acidity of Guinness also helps the cake to rise, as bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is used in the cake batter.

The alcohol in the Guinness is not important to the flavour or texture of the cake and most, if not all, of the alcohol evaporates away as the cake bakes. Therefore it is absolutely fine to use alcohol-free Guinness for the cake. There is no need to change the sugar or any of the other ingredients in the recipe and the baking time and temperature is the same.