This vegan Guinness cake is moist, fudgy, and full of rich chocolaty flavor! It's super simple to make and perfect for celebrating Saint Patrick's Day — but you'll probably want to make it all year long!
This vegan Guinness cake isn't fancy. It's a humble, single layer chocolate cake, and frankly, it's not much to look at. But I promise you, what this cake lacks in appearance, it makes up for in texture and flavor. This is one of the most delicious cakes I've ever tasted!
I didn't come up with the idea for a Guinness chocolate cake. My recipe is adapted from a pretty famous Guinness cake recipe by Nigella Lawson. I knew the world needed a vegan version, so I went and created one!
This cake is great for celebrating Saint Patrick's Day — perhaps as a dessert to follow up my vegan Irish stew, but honestly, it's so delicious I think you'll want to make it year round.
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Ingredients You'll Need
- Guinness. You can substitute another brand of stout beer if you'd like, but make sure it's vegan. Some brands are processed using animal ingredients. Barnivore can help you sort out which brands are vegan-friendly.
- Vegan butter. Most grocery stores sell vegan butter in the refrigerated section, near the regular butter.
- Unsweetened cocoa powder.
- Sugar. Use organic sugar. Conventional (non-organic) sugar may be bleached using animal bone char, so it's not vegan.
- Water.
- Ground flaxseeds. We'll be mixing these with the water to create a flax egg, which is one of my favorite vegan egg substitutes for baking.
- Brown sugar. Your brown sugar also needs to be organic.
- Vegan yogurt. Use an unsweetened and unflavored variety of yogurt.
- Vanilla extract.
- Flour. We're using all-purpose wheat flour, also known as white flour. While other types of flour may work, I haven't tested any, so I can't say for sure if they will.
- Baking soda.
- Salt.
- Frosting. I recommend using my vegan cream cheese frosting, but my vegan vanilla buttercream or vegan chocolate frosting will also work.
How It's Made
Below is a detailed photo tutorial on how to make this dish. Scroll all the way down if you'd like to skip right to the recipe!
Start by heating your Guinness and vegan butter in a small saucepan, while whisking them together until the butter melts. Take the pot off of the burner and whisk in cocoa powder and some sugar. Let the mixture cool.
While the Guinness mixture cools, whisk your water and ground flaxseeds together in a large mixing bowl. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes. The seeds will suck up water and gel.
Tip: You can speed up cooling of your Guinness mixture by placing the saucepan in an ice water bath.
Add sugar, brown sugar, vegan yogurt and vanilla extract to the bowl with your flax egg, then beat everything together with an electric mixer for one minute. The mixture will be a bit foamy.
Add the Guinness mixture to the bowl with your flax egg mixture, then whisk everything together by hand. Make sure the Guinness mixture has cooled to room temperature before adding it.
Tip: Your ingredients should all be at room temperature before adding them to the recipe. This might mean warming up your vegan yogurt if it's been in the fridge.
Now whisk the dry ingredients into your batter. Add the flour in a few increments, then sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the last addition of flour before whisking it in.
Pour the batter into a springform pan that's been lined with parchment paper. Check out this video on how to line a springform pan if you're not sure how it's done. Don't skip this step! Pop it into the oven to bake.
Let your cake cool completely on a wire rack before removing it from the pan. Once it's cool, carefully remove the pan, the slather it generously with frosting. You can also give it a sprinkle of chocolate shavings if you'd like!
Shelf-Life & Storage
Vegan Guinness chocolate cake will keep in an airtight container in at room temperature for about three days, in the fridge for about five days, or in the freezer for about three months.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, but it's very subtle. While the Guinness definitely enhances the flavor, you might not realize it was in there if you didn't know better.
Guinness cakes nearly always tend to sink a bit in the middle. You can even see this in the photos. This is due to the fact that the batter is quite thin, as well as the heavy amount of leavening supplied by the beer. If your cake sinks more than a bit, it could be due to mismeasuring ingredients, overmixing the batter, or taking the cake out of the oven too soon.
Maybe! My instinct tells me that other fizzy liquids like club soda or cola would work. I've used them both successfully in eggless cakes before, as documented in this article on veganizing boxed cake mixes. But I haven't tested either with this particular recipe. Instead of taking a chance, how about just making one of the chocolate cake recipes linked below instead?
More Vegan Chocolate Cakes
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📖 Recipe
Vegan Guinness Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup Guinness, or another vegan stout beer
- 10 tablespoons vegan butter
- ¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 ½ cups organic granulated sugar, divided
- â…“ cup water
- 2 tablespoons ground flaxseeds
- ½ cup organic brown sugar
- ¾ cup unflavored and unsweetened vegan yogurt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
For Topping
- ½ batch vegan cream cheese frosting (Note 2)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and line an 8-inch springform pan with parchment paper.
- Place the Guinness into a small saucepan and place it over medium heat. Cut the butter into eight to ten slices and add them to the pot. Heat the beer and butter, whisking frequently, until the butter has completely melted.
- Whisk the cocoa powder and ½ cup of the sugar into the Guinness mixture. Let the mixture cool to room temperature (Note 1).
- While the Guinness mixture cools, stir the water and ground flaxseeds together in a large mixing bowl. Let the mixture sit for about five minutes, until it thickens and gels.
- Once the flax mixture has gelled, add the remaining cup of granulated sugar to the bowl, along with the brown sugar, yogurt, and vanilla. Beat the ingredients together using an electric mixer on high-speed for about one minute, until the ingredients are fully blended and slightly foamy.
- Pour the cooled Guinness mixture into the bowl with the flax mixture. Whisk the ingredients together.
- Begin whisking the flour into the bowl with the wet ingredients. Add about a half cup at a time, whisking in each addition before adding more flour. When you add the last bit of flour, sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the flour before whisking everything together. Make sure to fully mix the batter, but don't overdo it.
- Pour the batter into the prepared springform pan.
- Bake the cake for 55 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
- Place the cake on a cooling rack when it's done baking. Allow the cake to cool completely before removing it from the pan.
- Slather a layer of frosting over the top of the cake. Slice and serve.
Notes
- You can speed up the cooling process by placing the saucepan into an ice water bath. Be sure to let the pot cool for a few minutes first (until it's cool enough to touch), then fill a shallow pan with ice water. Set the saucepan in the water bath and let it sit for a few minutes, whisking the mixture every so often. It should come to room temperature in about ten minutes.
- Feel free to use a different type of frosting. My vegan vanilla buttercream frosting and vegan chocolate frosting are good options.
- Nutrition information does not include frosting.
- Adapted from Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness Cake.
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Can you make this gluten free? Have you tried GF flour mix?
I haven't tried, but based on my experience with other cake recipes I think an all-purpose gluten-free flour blend should work!
This was delicious. Somewhat foolproof, too. I didn’t have enough flax seeds, so I subbed in a T of chia seeds. The vegan yogurt was only 5 oz, vanilla flavored & sweetened. And the cocoa powder was dutched. So I had to cut the baking soda in 1/2 & replace it with baking powder. Still came out perfect