I quite like making bundts now.  We seem to have come to an understanding.  As usual it was all about money.

I love to cook and bake but some of my favorite dinners are one pot stewy dutch oven-y things.  The bundt is a baking version of that.  It’s fancier than cookies but doesn’t require frosting so easier than a cake.  I was having an ongoing issue with trying to get the bundts out of the pan cleanly  – it never seemed to work for me.  I would wait 10 minutes.  Or 20.  I would run a knife around the edge.  I would wrap the base in a wet paper towel.   I got nothin’.  But a fragmented craggly bundt.  Which still tasted good but was not very pretty.

BUT

I easily solved that!  I bought a really expensive heavy duty bundt pan from Williams Sonoma (no they didn’t pay me, I wish they did!) and guess what?  All my bundt troubles vanished!  This is the pan I bought and I highly recommend (it’s the top one):

These are the things I like about it:

•  – it has handles
•  – it’s really deep, holds 15 cups
•  – it weighs as much as my 1 year old niece

I think Cook’s Illustrated recommends it also and that’s good enough for me.

In my quest for bundt recipes I stumbled upon a really great blog with a really great name:

I Like Big Bundts !  She has so many bundt recipes on there – it’s a treasure trove really.  Check her out for bundt inspiration.

So the other day I was having a trunk show and was looking to make a quick goodie to offer.  My younger two nyckids love Marble Loaf which we used to buy at Starbucks on our way down to Science class at the AMNH.  We call is Marble-Lo in our family as that’s what my kids thought I was saying before they could read. So I decided to make a Marble Bundt and decided that it must have chocolate chips.  I think it had something to do with the zaniness of the holidays (this was early December) and I was having a hard time coping unless I had chocolate chips.  In almost everything.

The cake was delicious and a hit and I made it through the holidays.  Sadly I have had to stop the chocolate chip method of emotional support.  For the sake of my pants.

Here’s the how:

 

 

butter your bundt ( I like to put a pat of butt in the pan and stick it in the pre heating oven for a minute and then swirl it around.  Since this cake I have found Pam with Flour – hallelujah!

 

flour it

 

meanwhile you should be mixing together the sugar, cocoa, corn syrup and vanilla.

 

and melting it into this wonderful chocolatey mess.

 

mix the butter and sugar

 

add the eggs (there’s a lot of them in this cake!  it’s a big one!)

 

Add the flour mixture

alternating with the milk

add chips and fold in by hand

 

clean up your mess

Now you are ready to make the marble-lo part of the cake!

mix 1/3 of dough in with the chocolate sauce you made earlier – I did it right in the pot!

 

 

yumz!

 

put in half of the remaining vanilla dough

 

put in the chocolate layer

 

put in the last vanilla layer – smooth it down and swirl your knife through. (sorry no pics of that!)

and rightfully so since I didn’t do a very good job at swirling! Ha!

Still tastes mighty good!

 

Marble-Lo Bundt Cake with Chocolate Chips 

adapted from I Love Big Bundts