Chocolate Beer Bundt Cake

Black lager or stout beer can be used in this easy recipe. Find more amazing chocolate cake recipes here!

Jump to:

• ❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
• 🧾 Ingredients
• 🔪 Instructions
• 🥫 Storage
• 💭 Things to know
• 👩🏻‍🍳 Frequently asked questions
• 📚 Related recipes
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

❤️ Why you'll love this recipe

The dark beer gives this recipe a deep, roasty flavor and a dense velvety texture. If I had to describe it in one word that word would be, intense.

Your fork just sort of glides through this almost black dessert and each bite fills your mouth with decadent chocolate cake and silky-smooth ganache.

In fact, this chocolate beer cake is so dense and chocolatey that it works best as a bundt cake. Stout would work just as well.

🧾 Ingredients

For this chocolate beer cake recipe you'll need:

• butter
• sugar
• dark brown sugar
• eggs
• vanilla
• extra dark cocoa
• bittersweet chocolate
• all-purpose flour
• salt
• baking soda
• sour cream
• black lager or stout beer
• heavy cream

🔪 Instructions

Note: This is an overview of the instructions. The full instructions are in the green recipe card below.

1. Beat butter until fluffy - about 5 minutes.
2. Slowly add both sugars.
3. Beat until light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs.
5. Add vanilla and chocolate.
6. Beat on low.
7. Mix flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.
8. In a large bowl whisk the sour cream and the beer until smooth.
9. Add the flour mixture to the butter in three batches, alternating with the sour cream mixture.
10. Spoon into prepared bundt pan.
11. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes.
12. Let cool 10 minutes in pan.
13. Loosen with knife and turn out from pan.

Ganache

1. Heat the cream until bubbles form around the edges.
2. Stir in the chocolate until smooth
3. Pour warm beer it into the ganache.
4. Mix until smooth and then spoon over the finished cake.

🥫 Storage

Bundt cakes are moist and tend to last longer than other types. This keeps well at room temperature, tightly covered, for up to 5 days.

For longer storage, freeze up to 3 months.

💭 Things to know

Expert Tip - Guinness works well in this recipe but so do many others. Choose what you like best or have available to you.

• If you don't have, or can't find, extra dark cocoa powder you can use the regular cocoa powder. I use Hershey's Special Dark.
• This cake does NOT taste like beer! It tastes like the best chocolate cake you ever ate.
• There is a scant amount of residual alcohol in it - most is baked out or cooked out in the ganache.
• IF you prefer not to use beer you can use a good ginger ale or try this chocolate sheet cake.
• A light sprinkle of Fleur de Sel is an amazing garnish for this!

👩🏻‍🍳 Frequently asked questions

Here are the questions I am most frequently asked about this recipe.

📚 Related recipes

• No Knead Beer Bread Recipe is hearty and delicious. It's made with whole wheat so it holds up to soups and stews.
• Beer Pizza Dough Recipe is a little more work than the no knead pizza dough but it it SO worth the trouble! Chewy, perfect crust every time!
• Vanilla Bundt Cake Recipe with Chocolate Frosting is a simple cake with chocolate glaze that works for almost any occasion.
• Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Bourbon Brown Butter Glaze has all the fall pumpkin spice flavor we love!

It's really weird but dark beers like stouts and black lagers have a bittersweet flavor that just goes really well with chocolate and seems to coax even more yumminess out of that magical ingredient.

This is an easy chocolate bundt cake that you'll make again and again! I love it for St. Patrick's Day, especially.

📖 Recipe

Originally published May 2010. Last updated January 18 to improve instructions and user experience.