Chocolate Streusel-ribboned Bundt Cakes

Glad that it's summer in Australia now!

With this warmer weather, butter can be easily softened at room temperature. And, with this condition, this means that I can be "retro" again using my wooden spoon to beat the batter of these The Home Bakers cakes...

I'm baking these mini chocolate streusel-ribboned bundt cakes for THB and this is the 14th bake for this event. THB is an baking event organised by my friend, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours. With a group of gorgeous ladies, we are baking all recipes from the book, "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas until every recipe has been baked from this book.

After baking 10 bakes from "Coffee Cakes", I can't help to have a tendency to generalise Lou's cakes. I reckon that most of the bakes in Lou's book are typically compact and crumbly. They can be moist but not usually soft or fluffy... 

Then, why am I still baking Lou's recipes? To support Joyce, of course! LOL! Seriously, I really like to bake with all my THB friends. Though some of Lou's recipes didn't work well for me, I really enjoy baking with my friends. Sorry ladies if I sound to be a little opinionated with some of the my THB cakes. To me, I reckon that all cakes or bakes can be delicious due to case-to-case basis. What is not ideal to me might be good to others... and vice versa. Nevertheless, I would like to stay on the positive side by continuing my THB baking and hope to discover more recipes like these that really work very well for me:

Apple-Walnut Mosaic Cake
Danish Chocolate Streusel-swirled Coffee Cake
Strawberry Coffee Cake

This recipe yields a firm and thick cake batter so that it is stable enough for the chocolate streusel to be nicely sandwiched inside. Like most of Lou's cakes, these bundt cakes are typically compact in its texture. They are lightly moist and nutty with a crusty finish but again... definitely not our preferred kind of cake as their texture are very similar to the chocolate marble cake that I have baked from the same book.

My nice-looking bundt cakes but a little disappointing in their texture and taste

Making the cake batter with my wooden spoon

The chocolate streusel

Assembling the cake

Typically Lou's coffee cakes - compact with a crusty finish

Being the rule of this event, only the host of the chosen bake can post the recipe in her blog post. Please visit Louanne from Louanne's Kitchen for the detailed recipe of this bake.

And, here are the notes and modifications that I made for my bake.

My ingredients list (which is 1/2 amount of the original recipe)

Chocolate Streusel

15g cold unsalted butter
14g all purpose flour
30g light brown sugar
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
6g Dutch-processed cocoa powder
45g chopped walnuts (pre-roasted at 160°C fan forced for 5 mins)

Cake
50g butter

50g sugar

1 extra-large egg (80g)

vanilla seeds scraped from 1/2 vanilla pod
150g all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt

1/2 cup sour cream

Using this amount of ingredients of the above recipe, I've baked 4 mini Bundt cakes at 160°C fan forced for 20 min.

Modifications that I have made from the original:

• I have pre-roasted the nuts and cooled them to room temperature before using them to make the chocolate streusel. 
• I have reduced the sugar content of the cake from about 80g to 50g for 1/2 amount of the recipe.
• I have also reduced the amount of eggs from 1 1/2 large to 1 extra-large for 1/2 amount of the recipe.
• Instead of using vanilla extract, I have replaced it with vanilla seeds scraped from vanilla pod.
• I didn't add any almond extract into my cake mixture.
• Instead of sprinkle the remaining half of the streusel at the last step of the cakes assembling, I have sprinkled all of the streusel after spreading half amount of the cake batter and covered the streusel with the remaining cake batter.

Happy Baking

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