The Best Chocolate Bundt Cake

Cook's Illustrated is one rockin' magazine. There are so many things to love. It's not just a bunch of recipes thrown together with some glossy photos - it's serious food love. I love how there are no advertisements - they just seem to get down to the nitty gritty and the accompanying articles with each recipe are really informative. I really enjoy reading about the ingredients, the process of coming to the "best" recipe. The no bullsh*t approach is something I really like and respect as well. I'm pretty much a no bullsh*t kind of gal. In the last month I've gone a bit crazy with Cook's making quite a few recipes from the Fall 2009 issue of Entertaining, their new quarterly magazine. I was watching some of their free videos on their website and there was one for Chocolate Bundt cake, which happens to be in the Fall issue of Entertaining. I decided to make it for the weekend.



It was a fairly easy cake to make and didn't require anything out of the ordinary. I was pretty excited about it, I've been craving a delicious chocolate cake for a little while now and I was confident this would do the trick. The cake is really quite tasty. It has a great chocolate flavor and the crumb is moist and dense. I've made a few chocolate bundt cakes that have lacked something but this one was really in truly great!

Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake
from Entertaining Fall 2009 Issue

*Bittersweet chocolate and natural cocoa powder are a must. There's a note in the recipe that says if you use dutch cocoa the cake will not rise properly and semi-sweet chocolate made the cake a bit too sweet.

Cake Release:
1 TB butter, melted
1 TB cocoa

Cake:
3/4 c natural cocoa powder
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 ts espresso powder
3/4 c boiling water
1 c sour cream, room temp
1 3/4 c ap flour
1 ts salt
1 ts baking soda
12 TB unsalted butter, at room temp
2 c packed light brown sugar
1 TB vanilla extract
5 lrg eggs, room temp

For the pan: Stir together the melted butter and cocoa powder in a bowl until a paste forms; using a pastry brush, coat the all interior surfaces of a standard 12 cup bundt pan. Adjust oven rack to lower middle position; heat oven to 350F.
For the cake: Combine cocoa, chocolate and espresso powder in a medium bowl; pour boiling water over mixture and whisk until smooth. Cool to room temp then whisk in sour cream. Whisk to combine flour salt and baking soda in a second medium bow,
In a stand mixer fitted with paddle beat butter, sugar and vanilla on medium high speed until pale and fluffy, 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium and add eggs one at a time, mixing about 30 seconds after each addition and scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula after each addition. Reduce to medium low speed; add about one third of the flour and half of the chocolate/sour cream mixture and mix until just combined, about 20 seconds. Scrape bowl and repeat using half the remaining flour; add flour mixture and beat until just incorporated. Scrape bowl and mix on medium low until batter is fully combined. Pour batter into prepared pan being careful not to pour batter on sides of pan. Bake until wooden skewer inserted into center comes out with a few crumbs attached, 45-50 minutes. Cook in pan for 10 minutes, then invert cake onto parchment lined wire rack and cool to room temp. Dust with confectioners sugar before serving.