maple•spice: Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Bundt Cake

Vegan Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Bundt Cake

With chocolate glaze, I mean, why not??

So I might just have a little addiction to cake. On the day my lovely birthday cake finished I made this, like I can't cope without cake or something! Basically I had some tofutti sour cream that I needed to use, to be honest I don't know how that happened as that stuff usually goes pretty quick in this house with nachos, burritos, tacos etc.. being much loved, but there you go.

Regardless, I thought of trying a sour cream cake and came up with this, I'm glad I did as it turned out beautiful, first try and all! The cake has a wonderful moist yet nicely crumbed texture, not too heavy at all and the flavour is perfect. I wasn't planning on adding anything on top as I was envisioning a simple snack cake but felt it just needed something. So I was toying with the idea of a ganache, chocolate glaze, sifted icing sugar or chocolate drizzle and settled on a chocolate glaze. It's the same one as I use on my doughnuts and worked well with this. I felt ganache would be a bit rich and not really suit the cake as I just wanted something thin and light, this works really well but of course you can do any of those options, or simply leave it plain, any way it'll be very good! If you do want a ganache, I highly recommend my recipe here, it's one of the best ganache's I've ever had.

Just a note on the sour cream, I don't know if others have found this but I find sometimes tofutti sour cream is really wet, other times, really thick. This time it was really thick and after whisking it to soften it I did have to add about 1 Tbsp water to the end batter. If it was thinner, I probably wouldn't have needed to. It is a very thick batter but if it's looking excessively dry, as in you can still see flour, just add a bit of water - a tsp at a time should do. It's still a 'spooning in' batter and not a pouring batter. :-)

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Bundt Cake: serves 16

280g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

100g vegan butter

200g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla

225 pack tofutti sour cream, whisked

100g plain chocolate chips

2 'eggs':

2 Tbsp cornstarch

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp xanthan gum

2 tsp vegetable oil

100ml water

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and flour a bundt pan. In a bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir in the chocolate chips and set aside. In a small bowl make up your 'eggs': add the cornstarch, baking powder and xanthan gum and give it a whisk. Mix together the vegetable oil and water and pour this over slowly, whisking all the while. When it is all added give it a really good whisk until slightly thick and gloopy. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer add the butter, sugar, vanilla and the 'eggs'. Turn mixer on and slowly go up to high speed. Stop and scrape down sides to get all the butter incorporated. Keep it running for a couple minutes until light in colour and everything is mixed well. When you stop the machine and lift the paddle attachment the batter should run down in a ribbon.

Now add some of the flour mixture to this and mix well, then some of the sour cream. Keep adding flour then sour cream mixing well after each addition. When all has been added spoon the batter into the prepared pan and level off with the back of a spoon. The batter will be very thick. Pop it in the oven and bake for 40 minutes until risen, golden and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. It should feel firm but bouncy to the touch as well. Do check if after 30 minutes however as all ovens are different.

Cake once inverted.

Leave it in the pan on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes then invert onto the wire rack, removing the pan. Mine came out real easy, it's a springform pan so I first removed the outside part then ran a knife around the middle cone. I then placed the wire rack upside down over the top and flipped the whole thing over and the cake just came away from the pan in one go. Maybe I was lucky though! Now just leave it to fully cool on the wire rack.

Chocolate Glaze:

1 1/2 Tbsp vegan butter

75g icing sugar

1/8 tsp vanilla

2 Tbsp hot water

75g dark chocolate, chopped

Simply place everything in a bowl and place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir until the chocolate melts and everything is blended well. Remove from the heat and give it a good whisk. Leave it until it thickens up slightly. You still want this runny enough to pour over but thick enough that it actually coats, to be fair I was probably I little impatient with mine there and it could have done with thickening up a bit more. As it's sitting and thickening up whisk it now and again to stop the surface crisping up. When ready simply spoon over the cake letting it run down the sides. Let it sit some more to let the glaze set, about an hour then it's ready to serve, so get the coffee on! :-)