TWD: Mocha-Walnut Marbled Bundt Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Erin of When in Doubt…Leave it at 350 (a clever blog name, don’t you think?): mocha-walnut marbled bundt cake!  Bundt cakes are great – low maintenance in that they don’t require frosting and so easy to transport, which is a key factor for me with desserts since I give away just about everything I bake.  My biggest decision this week was whether to scale the recipe back or not.  I’d made mini bundts last week and was reminded of how much I hate cleaning my mini bundt pan (it’s nearly impossible to get in all of the tiny cracks and crevices), so easy decision to go with the full size bundt cake!

 Though this cake created a mountain of dishes, it’s not difficult to whip up.  Walnuts are ground and mixed with the dry ingredients but otherwise, the vanilla portion of the cake is pretty standard – butter and sugar are creamed, eggs and vanilla extract added and finally the dry ingredients are added alternately with milk.  Originally, I’d figured I would skip the walnuts since I don’t like them, but I planned to give the cake away and I had walnuts on hand, so I ended up using them.  A little less than half of the vanilla cake batter is added to a bowl containing a mixture of bittersweet chocolate, butter, instant espresso powder and coffee.  We don’t drink coffee and don’t even own a coffee pot, so I substituted water for the coffee along with a dash of cocoa powder.  The vanilla cake batter goes in the bottom of the pan and is then topped with the chocolate batter; a knife is used to gently swirl the two in the hopes of creating a marbled effect.  The baking time for my cake was 60 minutes.  

I was excited to cut into my cake and see how it looked.  Generally, I don’t have great luck marbling so I had no idea if the inside would be pretty like Dorie’s.  It wasn’t, but I still liked it!  I think I probably added too much of the vanilla batter to my chocolate mixture because the chocolate portion of my cake seemed to dominate.  I saved one slice to try before passing the rest along to Shane’s dad and I loved it!!  This is one tasty cake!  Since the walnuts are ground finely they really didn’t bother me.  The cake was incredibly moist, especially the chocolate portion.  I topped my slice with some chocolate sauce but this cake is definitely good enough to stand on its own.  Many thanks to Erin for hosting this week!  You can find the recipe on her blog or on pages 180-181 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.