Chocolate Stout Bundt Cake

If you haven’t already, make sure you link up your creations to the TWO link parties that will be here every week, Talented Tuesday and On Display Thursday!!

This fella, the Chocolate Stout Bundt Cake from Cooking in Stilettos, popped up on Pinterest not too long ago and I was immediately smitten, but not able to settle on what to do first: track down the badass pan that made this shape, or make that delicious cake.  I decided to do it up right and do both, make the badass cake in the badass pan.

I did some sleuthing and finally found the pan, the Nordic Ware Heritage Bundt pan AND, if you caught my November First Week Favorites post on Monday, you saw that they make a “bundtlette” pan like it as well which would be so great for dinner parties! And of which I am barely restraining myself from ordering.

My best friend and her husband love dark rich beers and chocolate stouts so I though this would be perfect to make the next time they came over.  I used Young’s Chocolate Stout for mine but there’s all kinds of other chocolate stout beers that could work.

I figured the beer was added directly to the batter but it gets combined with the melted butter and then some chocolate before being added to the batter.

I used to scoff at the need to sift flour for recipes but aside from finally being able to tell a difference, having an adorable vintage sifter sure makes it a much more fun task too :)

After petting and taking too many pictures of the pan, The pan gets doused in nonstick spray and dusted with cocoa powder to keep it from sticking.  I’ve had nothing but disaster with any bundt pan I’ve used before so I was REALLY skeptical and discriminating on this guy, so I went a little crazy with this step.

I let it cool in the pan for a good 30 minutes or so before turning it out onto the stand.  And…it worked!  Look how good she came out!  That’s bundt-heaven right there.

I couldn’t find creme fraiche at my grocery store, nor did I want to make it, so I used sour cream with the heavy cream for the sauce instead.  The recipe makes a generous amount of sauce so you may not use all of it (and I’m even a sauce-o-phile).  You can see that there was almost an overflow and a good sauce lake in the middle :)

I couldn’t stop taking pictures of this cake!  It’s just so freakin’ cool.  Talk about jazzing up the dessert table this holiday season :)  And picture being served a little mini version all to yourself out of the matching bundtlette pan, cool, right?!

The cake came out soooo moist and rich, and vanilla ice cream is a MUST.  The beer flavor is just barely there but brings a definite unique flavor in the cake that most wouldn’t expect.

My first foray into a furniture makeover is being wrapped up and photographed this evening for it’s reveal tomorrow!  Nothing like a spur-of-the-moment, unplanned project!