Chocolate Rum Pound Cake

I’m still in the process of getting settled in here. You probably noticed the wacky reposting on Google Reader after I imported all my posts from Blogger. And you’ll notice some funny formatting and font issues with several of the posts that I imported from Blogger. I’m not sure why it decided to do that, and what’s worse, I’m not sure how to fix it. I’ve tried a couple of things with no luck. I’ll get that figured out soon, or else I’ll just decide to live with it. Oh, Blogger. Bless your heart.

Yesterday was a Frankenstein recipe day. What is a Frankenstein recipe, you may ask? I will tell you.

I had visions of chocolate pound cake dancing through my head all day yesterday, and I thought surely, surely, it wouldn’t be difficult to dig up dozens of good chocolate pound cake recipes on The Internet, and then pick the one that looks the best. And the result? Well, I only came up with about four, total. That is, from reliable sources. Even my trusty, loyal cookbook that has never let me down, let me down. Somebody needs to do something about this horrific chocolate pound cake deficit. Forget the national, financial one.

So, I took a look at the small handful of recipes I had found, and I read through the reviews and ratings. Most of them had several negative reviews. That could be because 1) silly people didn’t use good baking judgment and ended up with a miserable failure of a cake, and then blamed it on the recipe, or 2) the recipe is finicky and may or may not turn out right, which is risky for me because I live at a high altitude, so cake is finicky for me anyway.

Enter Frankenstein. I put the three most promising recipes side by side, and compared them. Then, using bits from each, I brought a new chocolate pound cake recipe to life. Sans lightning storm. And considering that this was one big science experiment for me, I’m pretty pleased with the end result. You won’t be hit over the head with chocolate; rather, the chocolate joins forces with the rum extract, and beautiful things happen.

Chocolate Rum Pound Cake

adapted from Paula Deen (2007), Joy the Baker, and BHG

Ingredients:

1-1/8 cup (2-1/4 cubes) butter, at room temperature

1-1/2 cup white granulated sugar

7 eggs

1/3 cup whole milk

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1-1/2 teaspoons rum extract

4 squares (4 oz.) semi-sweet or bittersweet baking chocolate, chopped

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, nutmeg, and baking powder.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Mix in the vanilla and rum extracts. Melt the chocolate by placing in a microwave-safe dish, and cook on high until the chocolate is partially melted (less than a minute). Stir slowly until all of the chocolate chunks have melted completely. Add the chocolate to the egg and sugar mixture and mix completely.

Add the dry ingredients and stir together until the flour is completely incorporated, but just barely.

Spoon batter into a prepared 10-cup bundt pan. Bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 65 minutes.

Let the cake cool in the pan on a cooling rack for ten minutes, and then invert onto a serving plate. When completely cooled, dust with powdered sugar, or top with chocolate glaze or ganache.

***This recipe is for a regular, not-high altitude, so if you live in a place like that, you should be able to use it as it is. I live at a high altitude, and if you do too, here’s how you can adjust it: Add one extra egg, decrease the milk by 1 Tablespoon, and decrease the baking powder by 1/8 teaspoon. Set the oven temperature 15-20 degrees higher, and bake for a shorter amount of time (around 55-60 minutes). Keep a close eye on it as it bakes, so it won’t get overdone.

Tags: chocolate

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 4:56 pm and is filed under cakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.