There’s not much out there better than cake.

Except cake with beer in it. And not just any beer, mind you, because you can’t put Budweiser in a cake and expect it to turn out. Oh, no. This cake calls for the greatest of all beers: Guinness. Guinness + sour cream creates one of the most moist, delicious cakes I’ve ever had, and it is, quite simply, to die for.

I’ve adapted our recipe slightly from this recipe at Epicurious. But know, no matter what, this cake is Captain Picard approved:

For ingredients and the recipe, see after the jump.

What you’ll need:

1 can (16 oz) of Guinness (or other stout)
2 cups (four sticks) butter or margarine
1 1/3 cups unsweetened cocoa
4 cups all purpose flour
4 cups sugar
1 heaping tablespoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups of sour cream

Preheat your oven to 350 and grease a 9×13 cake pan. You can use a larger cake pan for this, but if your cake is shallower, watch your bake time.

Bring Guinness and butter to a simmer over medium heat. Once simmering, remove from heat and add cocoa, whisking until smooth. Set aside and let cool for a few minutes.

In a very large mixing bowl, beat eggs together with sour cream. I say a very large bowl for a reason–this recipe makes a lot of batter. It nearly fills up the bowl to my Kitchen-Aid Artisan mixer, so you’re going to want to do this in the largest bowl you have.

Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.

This next part, you’ll want to be careful with. It’s time to mix the beer and butter mixture with your eggs. Here’s what I do. I first pour a little bit of the egg mixture into the beer and butter mixture and whisk like mad to help temper the eggs. Then I pour all of the beer and butter mixture into the mixer and let it whisk like crazy. Whatever you do, don’t stop whisking until everything is incorporated. If you stop whisking, you’ll end up with scrambled eggs.

Add flour mixture in batches until fully incorporated. Pour batter into pan and bake at 350 for 1 and 15 minutes or until knife inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. (If you decide to halve this recipe or to make several smaller cakes, I would start checking the cake after about 35 minutes).

You have several icing options. I’ve seen some people advocate icing this cake with cream cheese icing, so it matches the nice foamy head one gets on a properly poured Guinness, but personally, I feel that adds a bit too much cloying sweetness. This cake is very dense and rich, and despite the amount of sugar in it, isn’t overly sweet. The recipe from which this adapted suggests making your own dark chocolate icing out of whipped cream and chocolate–not an option at my house, given some strange lactose intolerance issues, though Martha Stewart has a nice recipe for dark chocolate icing herself.

Personally, I have to admit to cheating and going with Dark Chocolate Fudge icing from Duncan Hines. It’s quick, it’s easy, and to be quite honest, it’s pretty tasty. And the final decoration on the cake was my own little nod towards another fandom. You see, someone at my house was out working a thousand miles away over his birthday and wasn’t able to be at home, so this is a kind of belated birthday cake for him–he’s going to be home TODAY! And someone’s favorite superhero is Green Lantern.

Happy (belated) birthday, Shane. Your wife loves you.