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Welcome to Bon App\u00e9tit Bake Club<\/strong>, a community of curious bakers. Each month senior Test Kitchen editors Jesse Szewczyk and Shilpa Uskokovic share a must-make recipe and dive deep on why it works. Come bake and learn with us\u2014and don\u2019t forget to join the Bake Club Group chat over on Substack.<\/em><\/p>\n Chocolate and malt are a match made in heaven. If you\u2019ve ever had malted chocolate cake or brownies before, you know what I\u2019m talking about. But finding malted milk powder in the store isn\u2019t the easiest. Oftentimes it\u2019s hidden within an instant drink mix, combined with chocolate to create something that looks like malt, but isn\u2019t. But something that is<\/em> easy to find\u2014and an ingredient that packs a ton of robust, malty flavor\u2014is Guinness. And so this chocolate and Guinness loaf cake was born. It\u2019s malty, toasty, and incredibly complex in flavor, especially given such a short ingredient list.<\/p>\n The trick to making this cake comes down to how you incorporate the butter. The batter is mixed by combining all of your dry ingredients, then rubbing the butter in by hand\u2014similar to making pie crust\u2014until it is incorporated into the mix. (It should completely disappear; no pea-size pieces here!) This is a technique called reverse creaming, in which the flour is coated in fat to prevent excess gluten from forming. The result is an exceptionally tender crumb that is very forgiving and can handle it if you end up mixing the batter a little too much. The cake then gets topped with a lofty brown butter frosting, creating a loaf that\u2019s both playful and celebratory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n