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Published December 21st, 2022
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What's better than a Bundt with a perfect toffee crunch
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| By Susie Iventosch |
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| Chocolate Bundt Cake with Brown Butter Icing and Toffee Bits Photo Susie Iventosch |
This dark chocolate Bundt cake is the perfect holiday dessert, complete with brown butter icing and bits of English toffee scattered over the top. Whenever I think of toffee, I think of holiday cookie baking and candy making, and English toffee is one of my favorites. I am not so good at making it, but I sure do love eating it. So, whenever a friend brings me a batch, I am always so thankful and overjoyed.
As you know, we also love to bake with brown butter. It makes everything taste special with the rich nutty flavor and the delicious aroma. It's nice to have on hand to use for baking, on potatoes, veggies or pasta and especially in cakes and frosting. If possible, make the brown butter ahead of time and chill it until you're ready to use it. This will save a lot of time when making the icing. We like to brown a few sticks of butter whenever we have time and keep it in the refrigerator until we want to make something with it.
Please note that butter loses much of its water content when you brown it, so be sure to weigh or measure the butter for the recipe after browning it. For this recipe, 4 ounces of butter turned into 2 ounces after it was browned. The amount of water in the butter you use will determine how much volume is lost, and every brand of butter differs slightly.
Since we have not received any gifts of toffee yet this year, I used Trader Joe's holiday English Toffee with Nuts for this cake, which comes in a gigantic 30-ounce tin, and is deliciously crunchy. But if you make toffee, by all means use your own, and if you're lucky enough to have a friend that remembers you at the holiday season with a gift of toffee, then you're all set!
INGREDIENTS
Chocolate Bundt Cake
8 oz. unsalted butter (1 cup or 2 sticks)
1/3 cup cocoa powder Dutch processed
1 cup water
2 oz. dark chocolate, chopped (we use 62% cacao)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt
1 tsp. cider vinegar
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
Brown Butter Icing
4 oz. unsalted butter
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
5 tbsp. milk +/-
Toffee Bits
1 1/2 cups English toffee, chopped
DIRECTIONS
Chocolate Bundt Cake
Spray or grease a 12-cup Bundt pan and dust with flour. Set aside. Preheat oven to 350 F.
Combine butter, cocoa powder, chopped dark chocolate, and water in a saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring often, just until melted. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt and baking soda and whisk together to combine. Add half of the chocolate mixture to the dries and stir well. Add remaining chocolate mixture to the batter and stir until completely blended.
Add eggs, one at a time, stir well after each. Whisk in yogurt, cider vinegar and vanilla, and blend well.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake in the center of the oven for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for 15 minutes before inverting onto a cooling rack. When the cake is completely cooled, move it to the cake serving plate.
While the cake is cooling, prepare the icing and chop the toffee.
Brown Butter Icing
I like to brown the butter ahead of time, so when I'm ready to make the icing it's ready to go quickly. But, to brown the butter, place it in a pan with a light-colored bottom. (This way you can see when the butter is brown.) Cook over low heat for 10-15 minutes, or until the butter takes on a nutty aroma and begins to form bubbles and brown crystals along the edge and on the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat and cool. This can take a longer or shorter amount of time, depending upon the water content of the butter you use, as well as the temperature of your burner. Allow the butter to cool completely.
Beat or whisk the brown butter with the powdered sugar and milk until smooth and the icing is the consistency where you can drizzle the icing, but it will hold as it falls down the cake. This should be somewhere between frosting and glaze consistency. Drizzle the icing over the entire top of the cake. The icing will drip down into the center and along the sides of the cake.
Evenly sprinkle toffee bits over the icing while it is still soft and a bit moist, so that the toffee will hold in place. Serve cake at room temp.
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| Photo Susie Iventosch |
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| Susie can be reached at suziventosch@gmail.com. This recipe can be found on our website: www.lamorindaweekly.com. If you would like to share your favorite recipe with Susie please contact her by email or call our office at (925) 377-0977. Or visit https://treksandbites.com |
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA