Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake is one of my favorites, and the post is long overdue for an update! So here’s a new photo of one of the best chocolate cakes you’ll ever make.
Originally from an old Cook’s Illustrated recipe, Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake is not as dense as your typical pound cake, but rather soft and tender and almost reminds me of a cake-mix based cake. I mean that as a compliment. It has the tenderness and moisture of a cake mix cake but tastes like a scratch cake (no box taste).
Chocolate Ganache Icing
It’s definitely good without a glaze of a ganache topping, especially if you add chocolate chips. But being an icing lover, I just had to add Chocolate Ganache Glaze. I’ve updated the glaze, which is really more like an icing. It doesn’t flow very well and you have to kind of spoon it or pipe it over the cake, but it sets up nicely and taste good.
Greasing Chocolate Bundt Cake Pan With Shortening and Cocoa
Another thing I finally got around to trying was trying a new greasing and flouring method which uses cocoa powder instead of flour. You melt shortening, add cocoa powder to it, then use a pastry brush to paint the whole Bundt pan with this cocoa glaze. It worked! It also helped that I used a brand new non-stick fluted pan. After 15 years I finally purchased a Food Network fluted pan from Kohl’s. So far, so good.
Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake Ingredient Notes
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- Bittersweet chocolate or dark chocolate (such as Trader Joe’s Dark) both work well.
- Natural unsweetened cocoa powder is preferred over Dutch. One of these days I’ll test with Dutch, but I’m happy with the natural for now.
- Any type of all-purpose flour should work, but if you have a soft flour like like White Lily give it a try. If using White Lily (or any flour, really) you’ll need to weigh out 250 grams.
- For the sour cream, you can sub 1/2 cup sour cream and 1/2 cup buttermilk if you need to.
- Don’t forget to bring all of the chocolate Bundt cake ingredients to room temperature.
Chocolate Sour Cream Buttermilk Bundt Cake
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup natural cocoa not Dutch-processed, 2 1/4 ounces
- 6 ounces chopped bittersweet chocolate (170 grams)
- 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder or 1 teaspoon coffee extract
- 3/4 cup boiling water
- 1 cup sour cream room temperature
- 1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (250 grams)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter (170 grams)
- 2 cups packed light brown sugar (400 grams)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 5 large eggs room temperature
- 1/2 cup regular or miniature chocolate chips optional
- confectioners’ sugar for dusting
Chocolate Ganache Glaze
- 3 oz dark chocolate (or bittersweet), chopped
- 1/2 tablespoon light corn syrup
- 1/2 tablespoon butter
- 1/3 cup heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 12 cup bundt pan with flour-added cooking spray or grease and flour thoroughly.
- Combine cocoa, chocolate, and espresso powder in medium heatproof bowl; pour boiling water over chocolate and whisk until smooth. Cool to room temperature; then whisk in sour cream (or combination of sour cream and buttermilk).
- In a second bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda.
- In a standing mixer fitted with paddle, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium and add eggs one at a time, mixing about 30 seconds after each egg.
- By hand or using very lowest speed of mixer, stir 1/3 of the flour into batter. Add half of the chocolate/sour cream mixture and stir until incorporated. Scrape bowl and add remaining flour mixture and all of remaining chocolate mixture. Add chocolate chips if using.
- Pour batter into prepared Bundt pan. Bake until wooden skewer inserted into center comes out with few crumbs attached, 42-45 minutes.
- Cool in pan 10 minutes, then invert cake onto parchment-lined wire rack. Note: When inverting, you will need to run a knife around the edge to loosen.
- Let cool completely and dust with confectioners' sugar OR make the Chocolate Ganache Icing.
Chocolate Ganache Icing
- Put the chocolate, corn syrup and butter in a heat-proof bowl.
- In a small saucepan, heat the cream. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate mixture and stir until smooth and shiny. Spoon over the cake or transfer to a freezer bag. If using a freezer bag, snip off the bottom corner and pipe over the cake.
Cheryl
I would like to make this cake for my grandson’s birthday. I would like your glaze recipe. It doesn’t have to be a thick glaze.
Anna
Thanks for the review, Helen! I should have bumped this one up for Halloween. I guess I’ll go ahead and put it in a printable format.
Helen
I just made this last night — it’s a wonderfully dense and moist cake with great chocolate flavor! This is great — thank you, Anna!
Anna
Thanks for the tip, Anu! I will have to try that.
Anu
I made an eggless version using tofu instead of eggs. It was delicious- the texture was in between a cake and a brownie. Loved it!
Christy
I made this cake a couple of days ago with ingredients I had on hand (1 cup sour cream, no buttermilk, and no espresso powder). It was the BEST chocolate cake. So rich and good I didn’t even add a glaze. Thanks so much for the recipe! I’ll be making this one again.
Karen
Anna, I was just thinking about this cake – I’d made it when the issue came out, and wanted to make it again last week, but could not remember which issue it was in. Now I can go dig it out of my basement “files” (actually, piles). I like the texture and moistness of this cake, and it wasn’t too sweet, if I remember correctly.
Anna
Karen,When you make it, will you post a picture? I want to see yours.
Anna
Annie, bundt cakes are addictive, aren’t they? I can see how this cake would have gotten you interested. Sandra, I think I get mine in the coffee aisle. I believe it’s in the instant coffee section. I buy it and it lasts for years!
sandra
Anything that has sour cream, buttermilk AND chocolate in it just HAS to be good!!(would the instant expresso powder be found in the baking aisle or the coffee aisle?)
Annie
This is the cake that got my baking started. It is so good, and really easy. I bake all the time now and this is my standby chocolate cake, I even started changing the recipe a bit, a huge step for me. I have added orange extract and almond extract for something different.
Claire
I made the cracker candy last night and it turned out great! I used margarine and it worked. This cake, from the picture, reminds me texture-wise of a chocolate chip pound cake my mom makes! It’s the only chocolate cake I like.
tg
see, this is the problem w/ your addictive prose. you’re no longer allowed to just unveil an awesome recipe, now you vill provide the backstory too. (on the bright side, since “backstory” is an integral part of film-making, i’d say you’ve earned the right to insult as many lousy films as as you wish.)
Anna
Claire, glad the cracker candy worked out. Next time I make it, I’m going to make the “Peabody” version. That is, with the Keebler Butter Crackers, white chocolate and cherries.tg, the film was just so darn ernest that I can’t slam it. It was an indepedent film about a little girl — that’s all I say. Hopefully, she and the rest of the cast have had acting lessons by now.
Lindsay
please anna…don’t leave us hanging! what did you think?also, where do you find instant espresso powder?
Brenda
What no back story to go with the cake?? Why, what, when, where? ;-)Looks yummy!!
Amy
Does it taste as great as it looks????