Fudge, Cake - need I say more?

Glaze pools in the center - yum!

This cake made me realize a few things:
1. I need a new bundt pan.
2. When a cake sticks to the pan (see item 1), chocolate sauce hides a multitude
     of sins.
3. Patience is a virtue I don't possess - waiting for this cake to cool seemed an
    eternity.
4. If you gave me some cold milk, I could probably eat this entire cake by
     myself.

So what is this marvelous cake? It is the Tunnel of Fudge Cake from Cook's Country. I changed it up a little-slightly. I saw this suggestion after I had the cake in the oven. Mixing 1T of butter with 1T of melted butter and coating the pan. This might have helped me with item 1, but I still think I need a new pan. It is a good brand pan (Nordic Ware) and a pretty fleur de lis design. I see they now offer it with a different coating. Chocolate cakes seem to stick worse than yellow cakes. My pan has a black coating and I'm wondering if that has something to do with the sticking issue. The version now looks like it's just metal. I'm thinking they must have had some issues with my style pan.

Stick, Stuck, Stinks

One of the changes I made was omitting the nuts. Sometimes I don't like nuts in cakes and this looked like one of those instances and my instincts were correct. I also added 1tsp of chocolate extract. Next time I would definitely cut the chocolate glaze recipe in half. I'm all for chocolate but I had at least 1 cup left over (and I was pretty generous with it on the cake). Not that the chocolate glaze is going to waste-don't worry I will find a use for it even if I'm forced to just eat it with a spoon. Here are the ingredients halved:

1/4 + 2T(or 6 T) heavy cream
2 T corn syrup
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 t vanilla extract

I would also recommend putting torn pieces of wax paper partially under the cake when you pour the glaze on the cake. Otherwise you will be cleaning up the dish from all the glaze that runs down. It's much easier just to pull the wax paper out. I had some pooling issues in the center but hey that's OK - a little extra glaze goes with each slice.

See that fudgey center

Follow the directions when it says to remove the cake from the oven when the cake starts to pull away from the sides. It looks like it is not set and you start to think that you should leave it in the oven for another 5 minutes - resist this urge. My oven is a "slow oven" and I always have to leave things in for about 5 extra minutes and I did this time. But I can see that if I left this cake in for another 5 extra minutes, it would not have had that fudgey center and that would really be a shame!

After cooling 1 1/2 hours-it will shrink a little

To Recap:

Grease the pan with a mixture of 1T melted butter and 1T cocoa powder
Follow the above measurements for the glaze
Wax paper under the cake while glazing the cake
Cold glass of milk as a go with

What's that mess under that glaze? There's nothing to see here...

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Chocolate-It's What's for Dinner

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