Tunnel of Fudge Cake

TF was craving something sweet on the weekend, so I baked a cake!

Tunnel of Fudge

Slightly adapted from The Perfect Cake by America's Test Kitchen

Ingredients

Pan Coating

• 1 Tbsp. cocoa powder (any kind is fine)
• 1 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

Cake

• 1/2 c. boiling water
• 60g semi-sweet or dark chocolate, chopped
• 20 Tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
• 1 c. sugar
• 3/4 c. packed brown sugar
• 5 large eggs
• 1 Tbsp. vanilla
• 2 c. (280g) all-purpose flour¹
• 2 c. walnut or pecan pieces
• 2 c. icing/confectioners'/powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3/4 c. Dutched cocoa

Glaze

• 3/4 c. heavy (35%) cream
• 1/4 c. corn syrup
• 230g semi-sweet or dark chocolate, chopped²
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

Pan Coating

1. Combine the melted butter and cocoa to make a paste and mix well.
2. Grease a Bundt pan by painting the butter-cocoa mixture onto the pan with a pastry brush.
3. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Cake

1. Pour the boiling water over the chocolate and whisk until smooth. Set aside and allow to cool to room temp.
2. Cream the butter with the sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.³
4. Beat in the vanilla.
5. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, icing sugar, salt, and cocoa powder and then add the nuts and mix well. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until just combined. Or, if you're lazy like me and trying to avoid dirtying extra bowls, you can do what I did and just sift all the dry ingredients directly into the bowl with the wet and toss the nuts in on top. Then just take the electric mixer to it and mix for 30-60 seconds until everything is combined. (Make sure to get all the way down to the bottom of the bowl. There's a lot of batter here!)
6. Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt pan.
7. Place a baking sheet under the Bundt pan and place it in the preheated oven.
8. Bake at 350°F (180°C) for 45-55 minutes⁴.
9. Allow to cool in tin for 90 minutes.
10. Invert onto wire rack, remove from tin, and allow to cool for another 1-2 hours before adding glaze.

Glaze

1. Heat cream, corn syrup, and cocolate over medium-low, stirring constantly, until melted and smooth.
2. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
3. Allow to cool for 30-40 minutes so that glaze thickens slightly.
4. Drizzle glaze over cooled cake and allow to set for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

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¹ If you don't have AP flour, then swapping it out for soft/cake/standard/plain flour should probably be fine. I'm just not sure how the softer flour with affect the fudge-y centre. If you're worried about how the different flour will affect the crumb and fudge, then you could always mix hard and soft flours together to make an approximation of AP flour. I think 160g hard/bread/high grade/strong flour + 120g soft/cake/standard/plain four should be roughly equivalent to the 280g of AP flour called for in this recipe. ^Back
2 I actually used up the last of my dark and semi-sweet chocolate making the cake, so I had none left for the glaze. I ended up using a mix of unsweetened and milk chocolate to make the glaze and it seems to have worked out quite well. I used 120g unsweetend chocolate and 110g milk chocolate. ^Back
3 The original recipe has you whisk the eggs and vanilla together in a large measuring cup and then pour the egg mixture into the creamed butter-sugar mixture. Use whichever method you find most comfortable. I mostly just wanted to save dirtying the large measuring cup! ^Back
4 ATK say 45 minutes, but I ended up letting mine go for an extra 10. It's possible that it would've been ready to come out after only 45, but it still seemed quite underdone when I checked it. I know this cake is meant to be slightly under-baked by design. But I was worried that the centre would be runny rather than fudge-y without the extra 10 minutes. Use your judgement. I'm sure either way would produce tasty results. ^Back