This vegan chocolate Guinness cake takes things to the next level.
Indulgent, rich and velvety, the bitterness from the creamy Guinness perfectly compliments the chocolate.
Oh, we’ve also added a drop of Irish whiskey to the icing for an added cheeky twist!
And don’t forget, if you love this, then you’ll totally love our debut 5-ingredient cookbook So Vegan in 5, which is available to buy right now.
Enjoy!
Roxy & Ben
Omg we did it. Say hello to our Chocolate Guinness Cake ♥︎
Love this? Then you’ll also love our debut cookbook #SoVeganIn5 sovegan.co/cookbook
Posted by So Vegan on Friday, 31 May 2019

Ingredients
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 300g / 10.6oz light brown sugar
- 300g / 10.6oz plain flour
- 80g / 2.8oz cocoa powder
- 1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
- pinch of salt
- 100g / 3.5oz vegan margarine, plus extra for greasing
- 300ml / 10.1fl.oz guinness
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
For the icing:
- 550g / 19.4oz icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 6 tbsp vegan margarine
- 2 ½ tbsp soya milk
- 1 tbsp Irish whiskey (optional)
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C fan / 400°F. Then grease 2 x 7” round cake tins with vegan margarine and line the bases with baking paper.
- Transfer the soya milk to a medium-sized mixing bowl and stir in the apple cider vinegar. Set to one side for 5 minutes until the milk curdles, then add the sugar and stir until fully dissolved. Leave the bowl to one side.
- Sift the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large mixing bowl.
- Melt the margarine, either in a saucepan or in the microwave, and add it to the flour mix along with the Guinness, vanilla extract and sugar milk mixture. Gently fold until fully combined.
- Pour half of the cake mixture into each cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Once the cakes are ready, leave them to cool in the tins for 10 minutes. Then run a knife around the edges of the tins and turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack bottom side down. Leave to fully cool.
- Meanwhile prepare the frosting by combining all the ingredients either in a food processor or by hand until silky smooth. Transfer a third of the icing to a small bowl to use for the crumb coat later.
- Once the cakes have cooled completely, use a serrated knife to trim and discard the dome tops so the top of the cakes are flat. You can use the discarded cake to make cake pops!
- Place one of the cakes on a serving dish and use half of the icing that you transferred to a small bowl earlier to add a thin crumb coat. Then wipe down your spatula / palette knife, and use half of the the icing in the other container to ice the cake fully.
- Place the second cake on top and repeat step 10. And voila, all done!
9 Comments
I loved the cake and will make it again. For the icing I only had a peaty scotch whisky so used that. The icing was far too sweet for me but maybe that’s because I used the wrong type of whisky!
Thanks! The icing is already quite sweet so yes maybe it was already the whisky!
Just made this for my wife, she says it’s the best vegan cake she’s had, my so. Wants me to make it for his 10th birthday
Thanks Gareth! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
Hi – can you make this in one go (and divide after baking) if you don’t have 2 6″ cake rounds?
Cheers
John
can this be used for cupcakes?
Yep. Just need to adjust the cooking time. Mine took about 25 mins.
If the purpose of the apple cider vinegar is to curdle the milk, could you use lemon juice or malt vinegar instead?
This looks wonderful. Does it freeze okay?