Tuesday, April 6, 2010

TWD - Mocha-Walnut Marbled Bundt Cake



This week's Tuesday with Dorie is hosted by Erin of When In Doubt ... Leave It At 350. She selected Dorie's Mocha-Walnut Marbled Bundt Cake.

I took some artistic licence with this cake to try and use up some of the ingredients I had about the house rather than buying new ones. Instead of ground walnuts, I used ground mixed nuts. I used around 3/4 cup milk and 1/4 cup coconut milk. I also had some candy canes from Christmas lying around, so to use them up, I blitzed them in the food processor and stirred them through the chocolate batter to give a choc mint flavour.

I tried to get a "ginko" pattern as suggested by Dorie by pouring the chocolate on top of the white batter before swirling. However, I may have swirled too vigorously, as I have ended up with a mostly chocolate cake with just a thin outline of white.




This cake tastes OK, but it is nothing out of the ordinary, and for the amount of effort (requiring the melting of chocolate and butter with coffee over a bain marie), I can think of many similar cake recipes I'd prefer, and which don't require ground nuts. The candy cane chips didn't really do much - they just added a slightly minty taste and a few flecks of colour. I hope it doesn't remind people of toothpaste!

But don't take my word for it - it's nearly 11pm and I may just be over the day rather than anything else. To see how the other TWD bakers went, check out the TWD blogroll, and check out Erin's site for the recipe.

Postscript: At Clivia's suggestion, I tried this again next day - it tasted much better than the night before. Heck, I really liked it!



12 comments:

Jules Someone said...

Not even baking mine until tomorrow. Passover and all....

TLC said...

hope you had a lovely break!

Hindy said...

I hope you find that the cake improves by sitting overnight. That's often the case. Also, I do my melting in the microwave at 50% power. All the simmer water is too many pots!
The cake looks lovely!

Gloria Baker said...

This look so nice Cakelaw, huggs gloria

Ivy said...

Hope you had a wonderful Easter. Maybe next time it will turn out better.

Kayte said...

Am on spring break so didn't make this, trying to catch up on posts...we are touring colleges with Matt. Your cake looks good, and sounds like fun with the addition of that pappermint taste!

Soy*Baby said...

Love all the changes you made to the cake. Glad you liked it more the next day.

Brenda said...

But it still looks pretty damn good! And I think it was very creative to use up your pantry items and the candy cane : )

Lorraine @NotQuiteNigella said...

That's great that you give honest feedback about recipes! :D

A cupcake or two said...

I think its great that you have used things that you had available around the house. Its always good to be adventurous with cake recipes. The coconut milk was an interesting addition.

Conor @ HoldtheBeef said...

Well, it's good to know it improved with age. I suspect it would also improve with lashings of ice cream. And a shot of Baileys :D

Anonymous said...

It looks neat with the white around the outside, and you did really good with using up your ingredients!

Some people said that the coconut tea cake tasted better the next day too. Maybe the flavors need time to mature.