Double Dark Guinness Chocolate Sheet Cake

This cake…your belly will love you, your hips will hate you, but this is SO worth the hour long workout to offset these calories.
Rich, dark chocolaty goodness in every bite-Plain or topped with fresh cinnamon whipped cream or warm with vanilla ice cream and Kahlua caramel sauce– incredible however it’s served.
Such an easy dessert to serve a crowd- baked on a jelly roll style cookie sheet, you can squeeze 16 servings from this recipe.
This cake is requested for almost every birthday, pulled out at the last minute for community group dessert, and carried to potlucks.
The Guinness or Kahlua called for in the recipe only serve to enhance the depth of the dark chocolate flavor.  They can be easily omitted and replaced with an equal amount of boiling water.

Double Dark Guinness Chocolate Sheet Cake

Ingredients:
Cake:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
4 heaping tblsp Hershey’s Dark baking cocoa
2 sticks butter (1 cup)
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup Guinness beer (or any dark porter style beer) or Kahlua
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 cup regular milk with 1 tsp lemon juice)
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Grease 16 x 20 jelly roll style cookie sheet pan (the type with one inch high sides).

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt both sticks of butter.  Add baking cocoa and whisk until smooth.  Pour in boiling water and Guinness.  Cook mixture for about 1 minute and remove from heat.  Stir into dry ingredients and mix well.
In a separate mixing bowl, stir together buttermilk, beaten eggs, vanilla and almond extracts.
Add to chocolate and flour mixture and mix until smooth.  Batter will be thin.

Evenly pour batter onto sheet pan and bake on middle rack in oven for 18-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.

While cake is baking, make icing.
Icing:
1 1/2 sticks of butter (3/4 cup)
1/4 heaping cup Hershey’s Dark baking cocoa
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tblsp spiced rum (if omitting, replace with equal amount of buttermilk)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 – 1/2 cups powdered sugar (icing should be thin)

On stovetop, melt butter over medium heat in a large saucepan.  Add baking cocoa and whisk until smooth.  Remove from heat and add buttermilk, spiced rum, vanilla and powdered sugar.  Mix well until smooth and pour evenly over warm cake.
Cut into squares and serve!

16 servings