January 31: Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake

When I resolved to bake a cake every Saturday, I was a little concerned about how I would handle the busiest Saturdays.  Today is the first real challenge to my baking schedule.  Our daughter, Autumn, made it to the final round of interviews for the Georgia Governor's Honors Program this summer.  She was nominated for Chemistry and, since she intends to go to medical school, she is thrilled to have made it this far in the selection process.  Her interview was at noon, at a school approximately an hour away.  So, a great chunk of baking time in the middle of the day was lost.  Add to this a Reading Bowl meet for our seventh-grader and a performance tonight of annual lampoon skits at the high school (Autumn wrote the Junior class skit)...

Thus, I have a decided to "let a Bundt cake do the talking."

I have a few Bundt cake recipes in my repertoire that are delicious for a party or to give as gifts.  One is my Lemon Picnic Cake.  It disappears quickly at every gathering and I make it often, especially in the warmer months.  I have great Bundt-style recipes for Cardamom Coffee Cake and Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Glaze.  I considered all of these for today, but it has been a couple of years since I made my Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt cake. Plus, I realized last weekend that I haven't included anything chocolate in the Saturday Cakes yet!

The recipe is from Cook's Illustrated magazine, January 2004.  One of the things I liked about the recipe when I first tried it was the instruction to brush the grooves of the pan with a slurry of butter and cocoa as a release.  I have since used that as a release for other chocolate cakes in shaped pans and tube pans.

Next Saturday:  Caramel Cake, Take Two