Double Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake
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Happy new year! I hope 2012 is starting out well for everyone. I had a fun time at my friend’s party and the champagne cupcakes were a huge hit. I think next time I may try them with the Pop Rocks on top. Fun, huh?
Because the cupcakes only required 1/2 cup of sour cream, I had some leftover. So the other night when I was awake at 3 in the morning thanks to the crazy man setting cars on fire in my neighborhood, I googled sour cream bundt cake recipes. Side note: I’m happy and relieved that the LAPD now has a “person of interest” in custody and I hope when he goes to jail he’s subjected to random middle of the night blazing siren and hovering helicopter sounds like those of us in Hollywood have had to deal with.
Anyway, the cake is a bit time consuming and you’ll end up with a sink full of dishes, but it’s definitely worth the time and effort. It’s moist and chocolatey without being too sweet. My coworkers loved it, even calling it amazing and delicious, so you can bet this recipe is a keeper!
Ingredients
1 cup cocoa
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used chocolate chips)
3/4 cup boiling water
1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
10 tablespoons butter (1 1/4 sticks)
2 cups brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
5 eggs
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 12-cup Bundt pan with cooking spray. Mix the cocoa and chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Pour boiling water over the chocolates and stir to melt. Let the mixture stand to cool (about 2 to 3 minutes).
Meanwhile, combine the flour, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl. Cream the butter, brown sugar, and vanilla until creamy in a large bowl. Add the eggs to the butter mixture and blend well. Fold the sour cream into the cooled chocolate mixture until incorporated.
Add the flour mixture and the sour cream chocolate mixture to the butter mixture and blend well. Add the chocolate chips to the batter and stir to incorporate. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 55 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool the cake slightly before removing from the pan. Sprinkle the cake with powdered sugar and serve.
Recipe from Daisy (yeah, the “dollop of Daisy” people).
Champagne Cupcakes with Champagne Frosting
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For the past several years on New Year’s Eve, my friend and her husband have hosted a small party at their house. It’s a pretty chill night filled lots of socializing, eating, drinking, Wii, and board games. (Writing that made me feel old, jeez.) And each year, I of course bring dessert.
Since I’ve been sick this week, I almost took the easy route and made S’mores Pies. Then I realized that was stupid and decided on champagne cupcakes. Fortunately for me, I only looked at a couple of recipes before deciding on this one. The original recipe called for a pastry cream filling, but since I’m not a fan of pastry cream and I was feeling lazy, I decided to leave it out.
Well, the pastry cream wasn’t missed at all. The cupcakes are moist and the champagne flavor comes through in both the cake and the frosting. I would definitely make these again for a celebratory night! Plus, I love any excuse to use my contraband dragees and glitter. (We can’t buy them in California.)
Note: I know absolutely nothing about champagne (except that I like it), so I asked a couple buying champagne at the store if they would help me. This guy directed me to a $5.99 bottle of Barefoot Bubbly Moscato that said “Deliciously Sweet” on it and told me it would be great for baking; his husband made it clear it was not suitable for drinking. Point taken, and it worked great in both the cupcakes and frosting.
Photos of the process.
Cake Ingredients
1/2 cup butter softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup champagne
Cake Preparation
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix. Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, set aside.
In a medium sized bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup champagne and 1/2 cup sour cream (mixture will fizz and bubble a little). Add flour and champagne mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour. Batter will be thick.
Fill cupcake papers with 1/4 cup level measures of batter. Bake for 17-22 minutes. Let cool. Yields 18 cupcakes.
Frosting Ingredients
1 cup plus 1 tbsp. champagne
1 cup butter, softened
2 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
Frosting Preparation
Place 1 cup of champagne in a small saucepan. Simmer over medium-high heat until reduced to 2 tablespoons. Transfer to a small bowl or condiment cup and allow to cool.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, cream softened butter and powdered sugar together. Once the frosting is thick and fluffy, pour in the reduced 2 tbsp. champagne plus 1 tbsp. champagne from the bottle and mix well.
Frost and decorate.
Recipe from Sprinkle Bakes.
Chocolate Chip Marble Bundt Cake
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Tomorrow is National Bundt Day, and Food Librarian and the food blogging community are baking more than their fair share of bundts. In fact, this is Food Librarian’s third year of I Like Big Bundts, a time when she bakes a bundt a day for 30 days. That’s a lot of bundts!
Now that I have one or two or three or possibly more bundt pans, I decided I have no excuse for not participating, at least on National Bundt Day. Plus, my coworkers will expect something in the office tomorrow since I took today as a vacation day. I know, they’re demanding. I decided to make something with chocolate chips, and my google search happened to pull up this bundt on my friend Jami’s blog, Night Baking.
There are a bunch of steps to this bundt–it’s definitely not one of those recipes where you throw everything in one bowl then into the pan, but the end result is a moist, not overly sweet cake. My marbling skills are apparently lacking, so the inside of my cake looks a little sad; somehow I don’t think my coworkers will mind once they take a bite.
Happy National Bundt Day!
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups (17.5 ounces) sugar, divided
1/2 cup (1.5 ounces) cocoa powder
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup (4 ounces) hot water
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla, divided
2 2/3 cups (11 3/8 ounces) flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter, at room temperature
4 eggs
1 cup (8 ounces) milk
1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips
Preparation
Make the chocolate syrup first: in a small saucepan, whisk together 1/2 cup (3.5 ounces) sugar, cocoa powder, corn syrup, and water. Bring just to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and whisk in 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Set aside.
Preheat the oven to 350F. Spray or grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Use the stand mixer to cream the butter with the remaining 2 cups (14 ounces) sugar until light and fluffy, about two minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time until thoroughly incorporated. Scrape down the bowl, then beat in the remaining 2 teaspoons vanilla.
Reduce the mixer speed to low. Beat in a third of the flour mixture just until the flour begins to disappear into the batter. Beat in half the milk. Beat in another third of the flour, then the rest of the milk, and then the rest of the flour; mix until smooth. Gently fold in the chocolate chips.
Scoop out a third of the batter into a medium bowl. Whisk in the reserved chocolate syrup and set aside. Spoon another third of the batter into the bundt pan and smooth it with a spatula. Spoon the chocolate batter evenly over it. Pour the remaining vanilla batter over the top. Lightly swirl the batter with a wooden skewer or butter knife to achieve a marbled effect. Making a continuous figure eight motion around the pan works well.
Bake until the cake springs back lightly when touched, about 60-70 minutes. Cool in the pan on a wire rack. Invert the cooled cake onto a cake plate and dust with powdered sugar if desired.
Recipe from Buttercake Bakery via Night Baking.
