Saturday 9 July 2011

Chocolate and Apricot Bundt Cake

This cake looks better than it actually is!  You will appreciate that if you read this description from the recipe: "As it bakes the interior layers of the swirl (which is more of a layer than a true swirl) and the top of the cake caremelize and turn into delicious viens running through the cake." Now look for the interior layers in my cake!!

This was supposed to be a chocolate chip sour cream cake with three layers of chopped apricots, hazelnuts, sugar  and spices running through it. In the event, almost everything in the layers, plus all the chocolate chips, sank during cooking to produce a dense, oversweet, sticky layer at the top of the turned out cake. In addition, a lot of this sticky conglomerate stuck to the bundt tin. I had to scrape it out of the tin, spoon it back onto the top of the cake and stick it down with a chocolate frosting!

The cake is edible, and not too bad if you alternate a mouthful of the fruit, nut and chocolate mixture with a mouthful of the dense moist sour cream cake. The cake itself has a lovely texture!

I had hoped this would be my entry for July's 'We Should Cocoa' Challenge, which is to use apricots in a chocolate product, but I'm now hoping I have time to make another attempt at the challenge, as this isn't nearly good enough!

What I don't understand is why I can't tell from reading a recipe that it's not going to work! I've had enough baking experience by now, after all! I can look at a recipe and think 'I don't think I'd like that', but I can't look at it and say 'that batter will be quite thin; will it support dried fruit and chocolate chips?'

11 comments:

Kate@whatkatebaked said...

It would be brilliant if recipes carried warnings couldn't it? Such as 'although it worked for us, you may find this is a rather dodgy recipe, sorry about that'! I increasingly refer to reviews of recipes on different sites- it gives me confidence!

Suelle said...

Perhaps I should have been warned by the fact that this recipe hadn't been reviewed on the site where I found it, and I couldn't find it on any blogs either! Must remember to check these things out before I bake!

Alicia Foodycat said...

You didn't think that maybe anyone with spelling that bad shouldn't be allowed to write something as precise as a cake recipe? What a shame it didn't work out as planned!

Unknown said...

its an odd one isn't it? My chocolate and apricot cake also had a weird texture but tasted amazing... it's just an odd combo I think?... your icing looks very tempting though x

Suelle said...

Foodycat - you're right, another point to note for next time! LOL!

Dom - I'm not convinced that large quantities of apricots with dark chocolate is a good flavour combination, but I've used apricot jam in a chocolate 'bakewell' type tart quite successfully!

The icing was the fudgy one I've used elsewhere - melted chocolate with a little butter, golden syrup and milk added.

Lisa said...

Wow, just seeing all that chocolate glaze is enough to make me hungry. I have a sweet treat linky party going on at my blog till Monday and I'd love it if you'd come by and link your cake up. http://sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com/2011/07/sweets-for-saturday-25.html

cocoa and coconut said...

What a delicious looking cake! Chocolate and apricot is a really fabulous combination.

Chele said...

It is so annoying when you go to all that time and effort (not to mention expense!) only to not be totally in love with the end product. It looks fab though ;0)

celia said...

That is a shame, as it really does look quite pretty!

Snowy said...

It's a shame when things don't come out as planned - the cake looks nice Suelle.

Caroline said...

It's a pity it didn't work out as promised - I hate it when the promised layers end up at the bottom of a cake... at least with a bundt cake they ultimately end up at the top even if you have to scrape them off the tin. I once had to do that with turkish delight that had practically welded itself to the tin!