Bake(d) Along: Root Beer Bundt Cake

On Tuesday evening I was perusing various blogs to see how the other TWD bakers’ fared with the Blueberry Crumb Cake – lots of yummy, crumby cakes out there – and I was intrigued when I saw that Megan of My Baking Adventures and Nic from Bakeologie were doing a bake-along this weekend. I found this to be particularly delightful news for the following reasons: 1) The recipe chosen was Root Beer Bundt Cake from Baked; New Frontiers in Baking, a cookbook I recently purchased and have only made one recipe from. (It is a spectacular cookbook, full of amazing-looking concoctions, but most are too rich for everyday baking.) 2) Since the recipe was a bundt cake, I would have an opportunity to use my bundt pan; another item that’s only been used once. 3) The TWD recipe this week involves coconut, which Mr. Penpen doesn’t like, so I was going to have to bake another dessert anyway. 4) I knew I’d be running a 10K race on Saturday, and in addition to eating pasta the night before, I have a rule that I can eat whatever I fancy after running a race, so this cake would be a nice treat to look forward to. Isn’t it great when so many factors culminate into something as wonderful as chocolate cake?



Since the recipe was called Root Beer Bundt Cake, I was surprised to see that it had as much cocoa powder in it as a typical chocolate cake. But as Mr. Penpen pointed out, chocolate and root beer are both great with vanilla ice cream, so I didn’t question it. The end result was a superb chocolate bundt cake: moist but not too dense and very flavorful. It has a lot of sugar, however, the recipe calls for a generous amount of salt, so the taste balances nicely. If you ever want to bake a cake for Halloween this would be a good one, since with dark cocoa and dark brown sugar, it comes out almost black. I took it outside to photograph, and thought that it would also be an excellent cake for a summer barbeque. Maybe it was just the sunny day and I wanted to barbeque.

I give this recipe a 3 for Effort and a 9 for Deliciousness, giving it an EDR of 3. Many thanks to Megan and Nic for proffering this recipe for a bake-along and getting me to used my copy of Baked. If you would like the recipe for Root Beer Bundt Cake, you may find it on Megan’s site.