Winter-Spiced Chocolate Cake

I am all about the savory. Savory pies and appetizers draw me in but once in a while - chocolate comes calling like the four calling birds and I call back, "Yes, I will bake it."  And so it happened with this fudgy chocolate cake spiced with winter. Winter is here - or the meteorologists say it's coming. (Yesterday's prediction was "1-18 inches" will hit the Twin Cities Monday through Tuesday. Dear Meteorologists: How vague can you get?")

I don't do "pretty" very well - but it did come out of the bundt pan very prettily. And since pretty is as pretty does - I don't fret that my frosting efforts don't look as professional as they are in my head. (Years ago when I tried to pipe snowflakes in a Martha Stewart fashion my then young daughter soothed me with, "That's okay, Mom. She's a professional." Le sigh.)

I was pleased with the sugared cranberries. You don't need small motor skills to get those right.

The recipe comes from http://www.louisespis.com/2013/12/spicy-chocolate-bundt-cake-with-ginger and I really advise you visit the blog (scroll down for English) because she makes things very, very pretty. Louise provides a lot of the ingredients in grams - some of my amounts are near-approximations.

The cake has a nice dense, chocoholic-almost-not-quite-fudge crumb and the sour cream in the batter keeps it moist for days. It's very helpful to make things ahead of time where you are expecting 36 for a Midwestern Christmas Eve dinner and then turn around and provide an Italian Christmas Day dinner. So yes, make it ahead.

It is of course perfect for Christmas - my internet was out the week before Christmas (tricky when your recipes are online) but really - there's still New Years, Valentine's Day, family celebrations and even snowstorms where this would be welcome at the table.

And it's really easy - nothing to it (until you frost the cake and find your hands consist of ten thumbs). But remembering this cake - we are ending 2015 on a chocolate cloud.

INGREDIENTS:
Cake
8 tablespoons butter, softened
1/2 cup cocoa
1-1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
pinch of ground cloves
1 cup sour cream
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Frosting
8 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice mix

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 10-12 cup bundt pan.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Once melted, add the cocoa and spices and whisk until smooth. Add the water and remove from heat. Add the sugar, sour cream, vanilla and eggs to the cocoa mixture and whisk until smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl whisk the flour, baking soda and salt. Add the cocoa batter to the flour mixture and whisk until well-blended. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 45-50 minutes (until firm to touch and slightly puled away from the sides of the pan). Remove from oven, cool twenty minutes. Carefully loosen cake with a knife and invert onto a large plate (really, that was the scariest part of the process. I had a caramel-apple pie ready\y-in-waiting in case it all fell apart). Cool completely before frosting.

For the frosting: Combine ingredients with in a large bowl with electric mixer or if your arms need a workout - by hand. Spread frosting on cake and dust with cinnamon and/or confectioners sugar. Decorate with lingonberries or cranberries.

I had two days of laughter over the holidays and three generations. It's warming and fuzzy and sweet - and exhausting!

Pino and Pippin entertained my son's cat (Puck) and my sister's cat (Murray-the-cat) for two days.

He was a wee bit Christmassed-out!

Puck is going to be a visitor for awhile. Matthew will be in Germany and after figuring out how to safely get here there, it was decided that she will stay with us for awhile. Both my family and Paul's family have a history of family members taking in our furry loved-ones while we moved around. We will continue the tradition.

Puck is tiny, and affectionate and a little sassy. Just what our fur boys need to be kept in line.

Tonight all is quiet. And we wait. For the 1-18 inches of snow that was supposed to arrive three hours ago.

The fire's lit. There's leftover Chocolate Cake. 

Just as winter should be. I hope your December has been as cozy.

Chocolate Budino from Cat Cora

I don't know if you can tell - but there's chocolate oozing over the top crumbs. There would have been more chocolate seeping onto the plate if I served these right out of the oven (recommended). But I am expedient. When people are over, I do all ahead of time. Except take pictures. There were impatient people waiting for these delectables. I needed to get all the photos done in the time it takes for everyone at the table to make fun of Claudia and her pictures of food.

So, the photos are not splendifrous - I tried. There's irony here but you will see that in a few minutes.

These chocolate pillows are from Cat Cora. Who is Cat Cora? Never heard of her until this week. It's that not-TV-watching thing that snags me again. (All right! I confess, I watched Downton Abbey. Nobody does soap opera better than the Brits.)

Bundino means "pudding" in Italian - and they are almost like a British steamed plum pudding. Except they're not British and they're not steamed. They are irresistible. I baked small ones in muffin tins (everyone's on a diet for swimsuit season). And everyone ate 2 or 3. Small bites, right? It's always fun to fool yourself.

Cat Cora is best known for her featured role in Iron Chef (someday will watch). She's easy to spot - she's the woman. And she is #48 on Gourmet's Female Game-Changers in Food. Born in Mississippi to a Greek-American family of restaurateurs, Cora got the cooking bug early. She may have gone to college for Exercise Physiology and Biology, but after graduating she headed to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY to pursue her love of food.

(Cat Cora 2010, photo from Wikipedia)

Her accomplishments are varied and considerable. She co-founded Chefs for Humanity "a grassroots coalition of chefs and culinary professionals guided by a mission to quickly be able to raise funds for important emergency and humanitarian aid, nutritional education and hunger-related initiatives throughout the world."

On the flip side of the coin, she had a voice role in a video game Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine.  And if the coin had a third side you'd find that she has partnered with Disney producing videos about helping and teaching families to cook together. In 2010, she created webisodes with the Muppets (specifically a spicy Italian Muppet named Angelo) that centered on the joys and health benefits of cooking as a family.

Yes, she has cookbooks, kitchenware and some lovely recipes. Read more about Cat Cora at her website.

More of a molten cake than a pudding, this is simple (my mantra) and is simply velvet night.

Chocolate Budino (makes 12 Budini or one large Budino) Ingredients
1/2 pound bittersweet chocolate cut into small chunks (I used Sharffen-Berger chunks)
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks (which gave me an egg white omelette the next day - points for being thrifty & virtuous)
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
12 tablespoons unsalted butter - softened

Preparation
Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.

Grease or spray a 9-inch cake pan or muffin tin.

Place the chocolate over the top pan of a double boiler set over gently simmering water. Stir till melted.

In a medium bowl whisk together eggs, eggs yolks, sugar and flour until well -incorporated.

When the chocolate has melted, remove pan from heat and add butter, mixing until all is a deep brown and smooth. Add the egg mixture into the chocolate (I did the opposite) mixing well. Pour into prepared pans. If using muffin tins, fill half-way. (Which I did but next time I would fill them 3/4).

Bake 18-20 minutes if using a cake pan and only 11-12 minutes if using a muffin tin. You will see the edges start to pull away from the pan. Remove from oven and cool for ten minutes. To serve, place a pan over the in or cake pan and turn upside down. Quickly turn it back onto your serving platter. It is best served warm but I got the happy sighs when I served it at room temperature.

I served it with double Devonshire clotted cream and berries.

Remember how I complained over not taking good photos?

After the dinner ended, Kirsten came home stressed from work ("stress" being the predominant gene in this family).

"Chocolate! I need chocolate!" She popped a chocolate-muffin-budino is her mouth and then slathered cream on the last two.

She didn't care how it looked.

And then she covered it with raspberries and it looked better than my rendition that I like to think I did with care.

Go figure.

My "Project" continues to grow. I think it's the spot from the Cat in the Hat. And when chocolate is not readily available, this has been a grand week for looking out my window.

Check out what the other bloggers are doing to honor this week's game-changer Cat Cora and if you want to join in the fun, e-mail Mary at One Perfect Bite. Mary started this delectable journey.

Val - More Than Burnt Toast, Joanne - Eats Well With Others, Taryn - Have Kitchen Will Feed

Susan - The Spice Garden, Heather - girlichef,

Miranda - Mangoes and Chutney, Jeanette - Healthy Living, 

Mary - One Perfect Bite, Kathleen - Bake Away with Me

Sue - The View from Great Island, Barbara - Movable Feasts

Kathleen - Gonna Want Seconds, 

Linda A - There and Back Again, 

Mireya - My Healthy Eating Habits, Veronica - My Catholic Kitchen

Annie - Most Lovely Things, Alyce - More Time at the Table; Amrita- Beetle's Kitchen Escapades
Jill - Saucy Cooks, Sarah - Everything in the Kitchen Sink

Martha - Simple Nourished Living