Cocoa Bundt Cake

 Cocoa Bundt Cake

350°F

50-55 Minutes 

Cake:

• 1-2/3 cup all purpose flour
• 1-1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup Hershey’s cocoa powder
• 1-1/2 tsp baking soda 
• 1/2 tsp baking powder 
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1-1/2 cups buttermilk 
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Chocolate glaze:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup Hershey’s semi-sweet chocolate chips

1- Generously grease and flour Bundt pan

2- Bend flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt

3- Add eggs, shortening, buttermilk, and vanilla

4- Beat on low speed for 1 minute, then scrape the sides of bowl

5- Beat on high speed for 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally 

6- Pour into prepared pan and bake at 350°F for 50-55 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean

7- Cool 10 minutes, remove from pan to wire rack

8- Once fully cool, drizzle with chocolate glaze

Glaze:

1- in small sauce pan being 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 water to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved 

2- Remove from heat once dissolved, and immediately add 1 cup of chocolate chips

3- Stir with wire whisk until chocolate chips are melted and mixture is smooth

4- Cool slightly until thickened

Why is it so hard to choose which glamour shot of my food I am going to use as the main picture for each post? This cake turned out too perfect looking. 

This is a recipe I found in my great grandma boots’ recipe box. I don’t know that she ever made it, but who doesn’t love a chocolate cake? 

This won’t be a long post, because this cake was a breeze to make. I used Crisco to grease my Bundt pan and coated the inside with flour. I mixed the ingredients according to the instructions and poured it into the pan. Just remember, scrape your bowl! 

Something my mom taught me was to smack your pans after you’ve poured your cake batter into them. This recipe had a lot of air bubbles in the batter, as you can see in the second picture. I just repeatedly pick up the pan about an inch or so off the counter and drop it down. This helps bring those air bubbles to the surface so you don’t end up with a hole-y cake. I always call this “smacking the cake.” 

Then we chucked that bitch in the oven and let her bake.

I let it cool in the pan, sitting on top of a wire rack until the pan was cool enough to the touch so I could pick it up to flip. The recipe said 10 minutes to cool, but I didn’t time it. I went ahead and prepared a pizza pan covered in foil to set under the cooling rack to catch the glaze that will drip through when I coat it later. 

I really don’t know what I was expecting with this glaze. For some reason I was thinking it would be semi-translucent. Maybe it’s because the recipe calls to add water to chocolate. I was also a little nervous the chocolate would seize up, but to my surprise it didn’t. While the sugar/water mixture was heating, I just kept my bowl full of chocolate chips and a whisk right next to it. The moment it was ready, I poured it into the chocolate. 

The chocolate started melting right away, and honestly took less than a minute of whisking to get a smooth texture. I was thrilled at this point. I slowly poured the glaze over the cake and tried to get as much covering the cake as possible. The key to this is to have a slow pour flow, but fast movement as far as not keeping the stream of chocolate pouring on top of the same place for very long. 

Once the glaze was on, I felt like it just needed something more. It wouldn’t be a blog post from me if I didn’t forget something. In this case, I completely forgot to take a picture of the cake with the finished glaze as the recipe calls for it. I had an idea to take a Hershey bar and use a peeler to shave off piece of chocolate for a garnish on top of the cake. I used two fun sized Hershey bars (something we always have on hand because it’s my husbands favorite) and shaved off little curls of chocolate from the sides of each bar. 

If you plan on doing this, I would suggest doing this step before you make the glaze, and keeping the chocolate curls in the freezer. The glaze cooled and set very fast, so I had to use my crème brûlée torch to quickly heat up the glaze enough to get the chocolate curls to stick. Because I was using room temperature chocolate, the curls would melt onto my fingers if I held them too long. This was pretty much an intense 10 minutes of me firing the torch, sprinkling chocolate, washing my hands, and repeating. 

But Lordy, if this cake didn’t turn out gorgeous.

I don’t think I have been as excited to try something I have made in a long time. This cake just turned out so simple, but so pretty. I made it to take up to my in-laws house for Christmas. Unfortunately, to my surprise I think this cake turned out kind of dry and crumbly. 

This can really be attributed to two things. 

1- too much flour

2- over baking

Both are likely in my case. When I was reading the ingredients, I misread the amount of flour it takes as 2-2/3 cup. I dumped the flour into the bowl, measured the sugar and dumped it on top. That’s when I realized I misread the flour measurement, and tried to scoop out a cup of flour. Obviously, the flour was already partially mixed with the sugar, and while I tried my best to use a spoon to push the sugar to the side to get the flour underneath, it’s entirely possible I got more sugar than I intended to while scooping the extra cup of flour out.

Over baking is also possible here. I tend to see what the times are listed at on the recipe, and check it whenever. I wasn’t keeping a very close eye on this because the time seemed so right for Bundt cake. While it tested fine with a cake tester when I took it out, and showed no signs of burning, it may be slightly over baked.

The cake was a little dry overall, and very crumbly, but I thought the flavor was great. I feel like I should clarify the cake wasn’t dry to the point it was inedible or hard to eat. It was just slightly more dry than usual. The cake itself was not overly sweet, but it did have the hallmark Hershey's chocolate flavor. The glaze hardened into a firm, but not hard shell that made for a sweet nice texture in comparison to the cake.

I did find that microwaving a piece of the cake for literally just 10 seconds seemed to greatly improve the dryness. I cannot explain why microwaving cake made it seem more moist, because usually the microwave sucks the moisture out of everything, but I absolutely preferred this cake microwaved. 

I didn’t get a great picture of this cake because I was at my in-laws and I was too embarrassed to get some glamour shots and explain that I started a stupid food blog that no one is ever going to read haha

Overall, I would absolutely make this cake again, just ensuring that I measured the flour correctly and kept an eye on it to prevent over baking. 

Please enjoy another glamour shot of this beautiful (but slightly dry) cake.