Adapted from
The Last Course by Claudia Fleming
If you're avoiding alcohol, you could try it with ginger beer, root beer, or non-alcoholic beer, which don't have the background bitterness that
Stout gives the cake, but should do fine. If you do try it with an alternative to the stout, let us know in the comments how it turns out.
As mentioned this made plenty of batter, a little more than my loaf pan could hold. Since loaf pans vary (Claudia uses one that's 5-inches deep), only fill it 3/4s full. Additional batter can be baked in a small cake or loaf pan, or in a few indentations of a muffin tin.
You can also bake it in a 9-inch (23cm) or 10-cup (26cm) bundt pan. If you use a bundt pan, I'd avoid using one with too many small ridges and so forth; sticky batters like this tend to get stuck in those narrow crevices, and you may have issues getting it out. The baking time will be in the range of 50 minutes to 1 hour, but check before as baking times will vary depending on the depth of the batter, if using a different kind or type of pan than indicated