Baileys and Guinness Layer Cake

I wanted to make a special cake for a friend's birthday so I decided to use my new checkerboard cake pan set that I bought from America. My friend is not really a dessert or cake person so I struggled to choose the perfect cake to celebrate. However, he does like a drink (or two) so I decided to make a boozy cake with Baileys and Guinness. The final cake was delicious and very boozy indeed (I was too liberal with the alcohol!) and everyone enjoyed it.

Unfortunately it was more a layer cake than a checkerboard cake. The cakes spread quite a lot during baking therefore obliterating the checkerboard effect. Plus the cake batters cooked at different times so the Baileys cake was slightly overdone and the Guinness cake was slightly under. Next time, I'll make a sponge recipe and add flavour and colour so that the cakes will cook evenly and hopefully I'll get the checkerboard effect as seen on the box. For now, let's just pretend that I intended to make a layer cake from the beginning :) 

I'm submitting this to AlphaBakes hosted by me and co-hosted by Caroline from Caroline_Makes. It's a monthly challenge where we bake from a random letter each month. This month, the letter is "B" which is perfect as I used a whole bottle of Baileys! Have you made your AlphaBakes entry yet? 

 I used a whole (small) bottle of Baileys! oops!

 checkerboard pan set 

 It has a nifty separator which you place on the cake tin then fill the cake batters in alternating colours 

 I had leftover batter so I made some cupcakes 

 As you can see the Baileys cake spread out a lot so you can't really see the ring effect with the Guinness cake 

 This layer is even worse! 

 Cover with frosting and add candles. 

 Layer cake as it was always meant to be ;) 

I made 2 recipes of each cake as 1 recipe was not quite enough - the checkerboard cake pans are quite large. I did have leftover batter to make 11 cupcakes (Recipes below are for 1 recipe)

For the Baileys cake

125g butter
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
250g plain flour (I used self raising flour which in hindsight was not a good idea!)
1 cup or more of Baileys (adjust to taste)

• Cream the butter and sugar.
• Add the eggs, sugar and flour.
• Finally stir in the Baileys.
• Alternatively, you can mix all the ingredients together in a mixer.

For the Guinness cake

I used Nigella's chocolate Guinness Cake recipe which is available on her website.

For the chocolate ganache

200g dark chocolate, chopped
250mls double cream
25g butter (optional)

• Heat double cream in a small saucepan and bring it to the boil.
• Remove from the heat and add chopped chocolate and butter and whisk until smooth.