Chocolate bundt cake with cognac soaked cherries

I’ve been looking for a perfect chocolate cake recipe for a long time, and when I found this one on Epicurious.com with over 1,000 rave reviews, I had a strong suspicion that my search was over!   I wasn’t disappointed, and you won’t be either, if you try this recipe.  I used it to make a chocolate bundt cake, but it can be used for any type of chocolate cake: layer cake, cake made in a regular cake pan, or even muffins and cupcakes (which are the next on my list).    The cake came out moist, very chocolaty and rich.

Surely, it’s got lots of sugar in it (3 cups), but because the cake has coffee (which, by the way, you can’t taste), chocolate, and cocoa – the sweetness is compensated and well balanced by the black chocolate, creating the deliciously rich chocolate flavor!   The cake is moist because it has 1 1/2 cups of brewed coffee and 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk.

This cake is so perfect, I am for a while done looking for any more chocolate cake recipes, and I will be using this one for all my chocolate needs in the near future.  I want to try it with raspberries, mixed berries, liquor based fillings, and other variations.

Do you ever get obsessed over recipes that seem to hold a lot of promise?  Like the ones with lots of reviews and from a trusted source?   I do, and when I first found this recipe, I was so excited, I couldn’t stop thinking about it!   I was using a bundt pan with this recipe and was anxious to see, as moist as this cake was described, if it would successfully release from my bundt pan, or if it would end up a delicious bundt cake disaster.    Then I had to wait hours for the cake to bake, cool off, and for me to finish taking all these photos!   By the time I finally tried a piece of this cake, I was almost a nervous rack!  Well, this recipe delivered all the promise that it held, and my hours of anticipation were not wasted!  I was also pleased that the cake released easily from the bundt pan.

I also wanted to add a little kick to this recipe, so I soaked sour cherries in cognac overnight to add to the batter.   Cognac soaked sour cherries definitely add a great touch – I highly recommend you add them too.  However, this cake is already perfect as it is, without any cherries.   I’ve made it both ways, with cherries and without them, and it’s great either way.

If using sour cherries (optional):
1 can of sour tart cherries or 1 cup fresh pitted sour cherries
1/4 cup cognac for soaking it overnight.

I made this cake with sour cherries soaked in cognac.  You can completely skip that step.   If you want to use sour cherries, drain any juices from the can and soak sour cherries in 1/4 cup cognac for at least 2 hours or overnight.  Drain cherries from cognac before adding them to the cake batter (see instructions below):

1)     Preheat oven to 350 F.   Chop chocolate bar in small pieces.  I used Lindt chocolate bar with 70% cocoa, and it worked perfectly in this recipe.

2)   Add finely chopped chocolate to the small bowl with hot coffee, stir well and let the mixture sit until all chocolate melts.

3)  In a large bowl, add sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and baking powder, and mix all these ingredients well.

4)  In a separate large bowl, beat 3 eggs until eggs are fluffy and thickened, and slight foam forms – about 3 minutes by hand-held mixer.

Add oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate coffee mixture – continue beating until all are well incorporated.

5)  Add flour-cocoa-sugar mixture to the wet ingredients and mix with the mixer just until everything is mixed well.  Do not over-mix.

6)  Prepare Bundt pan by spraying it generously with Baker’s spray, which contains flour.

7)  If using cherries, fill 1/3 of the bundt pan with chocolate mixture, add half of cherries.  fill another 1/3 of bundt pan with chocolate batter, add the rest of cherries.  Fill the rest of the bundt pan with chocolate mixture just below the pan edges.

If not using cherries, just fill the bundt pan with chocolate mixture just below the pan edges.

After filling my bundt pan, I had exactly 1 cup of batter left. You might not – depends on the size of the pan you’re using. Either way, don’t let your bundt pan overflow with batter because the cake will rise as it’s baking, the chocolate mixture should fill the bundt pan just below the pan edges.   I have filled 3 little muffin molds with the remainder of the batter.

8)  Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, turning the pan 180 degrees around half way through baking time for even baking.  Tooth pick inserted in the middle of the cake should come out clean.  First, when you insert the tooth pick at around 1 hour, it should come out clean if inserted near pan edges, but it will come out wet if inserted towards the middle of the pan.  During the last 15 minutes of baking, tooth pick when inserted in the middle should come out clean.

9)  Remove the bundt pan from oven, let it cool for 40 minutes on wire rack.   To successfully release the cake from the bundt pan, I follow these steps:

• After the bundt pan cooled on wire rack for 40 minutes, place it in the freezer for 30 minutes.  It will still be quite hot to the touch even after 40 minutes of cooling, so make sure to use kitchen mittens.
• After keeping the bundt pan in the freezer for 30 minutes, remove it from the freezer and place it upside down on a serving platter.  Let the bundt pan sit that way for as short as half a minute to as long as 20 minutes without moving to let the gravity do the work.  Then, gently lift the bundt pan.  Your cake will be successfully released.