Red Velvet Chocolate Guinness Cake

Asked by TraceyHorton. Answered on 13th October 2015

Full question

Hello I've been making Nigella's Chocolate Guinness cake for some time now and it's the best cake I've ever made and tasted. Everyone that I've baked it for thinks I'm the best baker ever but obviously it's the amazing recipe! The problem I am having though is now I'm trying to find a recipe for a red velvet or vanilla cake that gives me the exact same consistency as the chocolate Guinness cake and I'm having no luck. Is there any way to alter the ingredients of the Guinness cake recipe to make it red in colour? Would just adding red food colouring work or not? Or if I wanted to make the cake white instead of brown, do I just substitute the cocoa or replace it with flour or would it still turn out as a dark cake because of the Guinness? I would really appreciate any feedback and help you can offer. Thanks, Tracey

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake (from Feast and on the Nigella website) is a very popular cake and has a moist, fine crumb and a slightly close texture, not unlike a gingerbread cake. Red velvet cakes tend to be slightly more spongy and open in texture.

Very sadly we believe that it would be difficult to change the colour of the Chocolate Guinness Cake, even if you added a lot of red food colouring. As well as the dark colour of the cocoa, the cake is made with inky-black Guinness. Even if you changed the cocoa for flour the cake would still naturally be quite dark, and we suspect that the slightly less robust flavour of vanilla would be overpowered by the flavour of the Guinness. We suspect that a white chocolate mud cake (an Australian favourite) would be the closest in texture and the easiest to adapt to a red colour. Unfortunately Nigella doesn't currently have her own recipe for this type of cake, but there are several published recipes available from other sources.