By the Book: Chocolate Coffee Bundt Cake

It's a sign that you're a kitchen junkie when you long for a bundt pan.  And not just any bundt pan, but one that is heavy and solidly constructed, like a Nordic Ware Pro Cast Original 10-cup capacity bundt pan.

It's also a sign that you spend way too much time flipping through cookbooks when you yearn for a bundt pan so you can make all the different bundt cake recipes.

I speak from personal experience here.  I am a kitchen junkie and I do spend an awful lot of time flipping through cookbooks.  I am also the proud owner of a new and fantastic bundt pan.  We will have a long and happy relationship, baking every permutation of bundt cake you could possibly imagine.

Here is the first recipe to be tested in my lovely new pan. It was a fan favorite.  The cake is wonderfully moist and springy, with a coffee enhancing the chocolate flavor.  Coffee and chocolate--they're a dream team.  And this bundt cake seems to be perfect for any time of the day - breakfast, mid-morning snack, mid-afternoon snack, dessert, meal supplement (I swear chocolate enhances any meal), or late-night fridge raid.


Chocolate Bundt Cake with Chocolate Sour Cream Glaze
From The Joy the Baker Cookbook: 100 Simple and Comforting Recipes by (you guessed it) Joy (the Baker) Wilson

Ingredients:
For the bundt cake:
1 1/4 cups hot prepared coffee
1 cup unseetened cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. vegetable oil

For the glaze:
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter
1 cup (6 oz.) semisweet chocolate
4 tbsp. hot prepared coffee
1/3 cup sour cream, room temperature

Preparation:
Put a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour a 10-inch bundt pan and set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the coffee and cocoa powder until smooth and no lumps remain. In a separate large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. In yet another separate bowl, whisk together sugar and eggs until thick and pale. Add the sour cream/Greek yogurt and oil and carefully whisk until well incorporated. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and whisk to incorporate. Once no flour remains, add the coffee mixture and stir until combined. The batter will be loose and smooth.

Pour batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake for 45-60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and allow the cake to cool in the pan for 20 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely.  Wait until completely cooled before icing.

Please excuse my excessive flouring of the bundt pan.
It seems to have stuck on the outside of the cake. Thankfully,
it didn't affect the decadent taste of the cake...and I was able
to cover most of it with icing. Tricky, huh?

Hmm... Maybe I should work on my icing skills.
Really, it's remarkable that there was ANY icing at all
for the bundt. One bite from a spoon and you'll be
compulsively downing bite after bite...

Notes:
--When I made this cake, I used up some icing I had leftover from another Joy the Baker recipe. That icing is The Best Chocolate Buttercream Frosting. And it really is. You can find the recipe for it here. But I bet the glaze is awfully good too. Can you every go wrong with frosting? (Yes, you can, but only when it's a terrible recipe, which is not something you'll find from Joy the Baker, not at all).