I'm not entirely sure if I'm jesting about all of the above. The little motivated part of me is inclined to bake this cake again sucessfully, but the other part of me that hates dishes is more....meh. I do like that frosting is optional for bundt cakes given its shape. Unfortunately, the beautiful shape is kinda defeated when you fail to grease and flour your pan enough so that when you try to pry it out, only half plops out, and the remaining bits kinda crumble into a misfitting puzzle.
Being the go-getter that I am, it wasn't enough to attempt to make just a single flavored bundt cake apparently. No, I had to make a marbled bundt cake with pretty swirls of vanille and chocolate instead. This of course led to a little adventure in learning about cocoa powder and spending a solid 10 minutes starting at the baking aisle. Given that I'll probably be in CT for only one more year, it seems excessive to buy both dutch processed powder and normal cocoa powder. However, after reading several pages about cocoa power from David Lebovitz and Joy the Baker, it seems clear that many baking blogs that call for "cocoa powder" without really specifying, may actually mean dutch processed in their recipe.
I ended up going with normal cocoa powder, though I get a feeling the semi-insane part of me will end up forcing me to also buy dutch processed just to try it out (unclear why I've decided to describe my personality as separate entities in this post). If anyone is too lazy to read the links I've posted, basically dutch processed powder neutralizes the acidity found in cocoa powder, which can change affect your cake's final texture and rise depending on if you are correctly using baking powder or baking soda. The mnemonic that someone mentioned in a comment was "dutch-processed = baking powder."
Doing all of this googling also came to highlight, yet again, the lack of basic science education in our society. Several Yahoo! Answers questions popped up where frantic people asked if "chocolate processed with alkali" was bad for you or had toxins. And unfortunately, people again fell to the fallacy that processed equals evil big agro/unhealthy and unprocessed equals more "natural" and better for you. And the classic, "if you can't pronounce it, its probably bad for you!" trope. Maybe even worse, or as a result, several of the super fancy cocoa powders I was examining at the grocery store used this as an advertisement point (ie our powder is ~natural~ and 100% unprocessed for full on maximal chocolate without the chemicals!)
Sorry if that bitterness is a turn off. I just had my hair cut by a nice woman who also seemed to believe that people who touch certain parts of their heads or lose hair at specific random spots are somehow activating different parts of their brain for personality traits like motivation or confidence. Just. Whyyyyy.
Well, while my mood is now a bit sour, this cake certainly was not bitter. Despite the problems getting it out the pan, the bundt shape also meant it had a nice crust that I personally enjoyed. The chocolate and vanilla swirling could have probably been more distributed, but that is likely again my fault for not alternating the different batters well. Additionally, I found my baking time was a bit less than what was called for in the recipe. I image that this and a combination of how it took to get the cake out of the pan resulted in the cake's slight dryness. I'm not entirely sure if this a pound cake, but my cake definitely seemed a bit too dry and not buttery enough to truly be ~pound cake~.
Recipe from Sailus Food.
TL;DR:
- Bundt Pans need to be very very well greased
- Dutch processed cocoa = baked goods with baking powder as the main leavener
- Processed dos not equal "bad for you"
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